tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36594042295868595642023-11-15T10:40:17.262-08:00Captain HaddockSelected Short Stories and Writings
Kumpulan Cerita dan Tulisan PendekArchibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-21085430923199372352010-04-24T06:25:00.000-07:002010-04-24T07:18:30.770-07:00My Son, The Fanatic<div><b><i>By: Hanif Kureishi</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Surreptitiously the father began going into his son’s bedroom. He would sit there for hours, rousing himself only to seek clues. What bewildered him was that Ali was getting tidier. Instead of the usual tangle of clothes, books, cricket bats, video games, the room was becoming neat and ordered; spaces began appearing where before there had been only mess.</div><div><br /></div><div>Initially Parvez had been pleased: his son was out-growing his teenage attitudes. But one day, beside the dustbin, Parvez found a torn bag which contained not only old toys, but computer discs, video tapes, new books and fashionable clothes the boy had bought a few months before. Also without explanation, Ali had parted from the English girlfriend who used to come often to the house. His old friends stopped ringing.</div><div><br /></div><div>For reasons he didn’t himself understand, Parvez wasn’t able to bring up the subject of Ali’s unusual behaviour. He was aware that he had become slightly afraid of his son, who, alongside his silences, was developing a sharp tongue. One remark Parvez did make, ‘You don’t play your guitar any more,’ elicited the mysterious but conclusive reply, ‘There are more important things to be done.’</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet Parvez felt his son’s eccentricity as an injustice. He had always been aware of the pitfalls which other men’s sons had fallen into in England. And so, for Ali, he worked long hours and spent a lot of money paying for his education as an accountant. He had bought him good suits, all the books he required and a computer. And now the boy was throwing his possessions out!</div><div><br /></div><div>The TV, video and sound system followed the guitar. Soon the room was practically bare. Even the unhappy walls bore marks where Ali’s pictures had been removed. Parvez couldn’t sleep; he went more to the whisky bottle, even when he was at work. He realised it was imperative to discuss the matter with someone sympathetic.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez had been a taxi driver for twenty years. Half that time he’d worked for the same firm. Like him, most of the other drivers were Punjabis. They preferred to work at night, the roads were clearer and the money better. They slept during the day, avoiding their wives. Together they led almost a boy’s life in the cabbies’ office, playing cards and practical jokes, exchanging lewd stories, eating together and discussing politics and their problems.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Parvez had been unable to bring this subject up with his friends. He was too ashamed. And he was afraid, too, that they would blame him for the wrong turning his boy had taken, just as he had blamed other fathers whose sons had taken to running around with bad girls, truanting from school and joining gangs.</div><div><br /></div><div>For years Parvez had boasted to the other men about how Ali excelled at cricket, swimming and football, and how attentive a scholar he was, getting straight ‘A’ in most subjects. Was it asking too much for Ali to get a good job now, marry the right girl and start a family? Once this happened, Parvez would be happy. His dreams of doing well in England would have come true. Where had he gone wrong?</div><div><br /></div><div>But one night, sitting in the taxi office on busted chairs with his two closest friends watching a Sylvester Stallone film, he broke his silence.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I can’t understand it!’ he burst out. ‘Everything is going from his room. And I can’t talk to him any more. We were not father and son – we were brothers! Where has he gone? Why is he torturing me!’</div><div><br /></div><div>And Parvez put his head in his hands.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even as he poured out his account the men shook their heads and gave one another knowing glances. From their grave looks Parvez realised they understood the situation. ‘Tell me what is happening!’ he demanded.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reply was almost triumphant. They had guessed something was going wrong. Now it was clear: Ali was taking drugs and selling his possessions to pay for them. That was why his bedroom was emptying.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What must I do then?’</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez’s friends instructed him to watch Ali scrupulously and then be severe with him, before the boy went mad, overdosed or murdered someone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez staggered out into the early morning air, terrified they were right. His boy – the drug addict killer!</div><div><br /></div><div>To his relief he found Bettina sitting in his car.</div><div><br /></div><div>Usually the last customers of the night were local ‘brasses’ or prostitutes. The taxi drivers knew them well, often driving them to liaisons. At the end of the girls’ night, the men would ferry them home, though sometimes the women would join them for a drinking session in the office. Occasionally the drivers would go with the girls. ‘A ride in exchange for a ride’, it was called.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bettina had known Parvez for three years. She lived outside the town and on the long drive home, where she sat not in the passenger seat but beside him, Parvez had talked to her about his life and hopes, just as she talked about hers. They saw each other most nights.</div><div><br /></div><div>He could talk to her about things he’d never be able to discuss with his own wife. Bettina, in turn, always reported on her night’s activities. He liked to know where she was and with whom. Once he had rescued her from a violent client, and since then they had come to care for one another.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though Bettina had never met the boy, she heard about Ali continually. That late night, when he told Bettina that he suspected Ali was on drugs, she judged neither the boy nor his father, but became businesslike and told him what to watch for.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘It’s all in the eyes,’ she said. They might be blood-shot; the pupils might be dilated; he might look tired. He could be liable to sweats, or sudden mood changes. ‘Okay?’</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez began his vigil gratefully. Now he knew what the problem might be, he felt better. And surely, he figured, things couldn’t have gone too far? With Bettina’s help he would soon sort it out.</div><div><br /></div><div>He watched each mouthful the boy took. He sat beside him at every opportunity and looked into his eyes. When he could he took the boy’s hand, checking his temperature.</div><div><br /></div><div>If the boy wasn’t at home Parvez was active, looking under the carpet, in his drawers, behind the empty wardrobe, sniffing, inspecting, probing. He knew what to look for:</div><div><br /></div><div>Bettina had drawn pictures of capsules, syringes, pills, powders, rocks. Every night she waited to hear news of what he’d witnessed.</div><div><br /></div><div>After a few days of constant observation, Parvez was able to report that although the boy had given up sports, he seemed healthy, with clear eyes. He didn’t, as his father expected, flinch guiltily from his gaze. In fact the boy’s mood was alert and steady in this sense: as well as being sullen, he was very watchful. He returned his father’s long looks with more than a hint of criticism, of reproach even, so much so that Parvez began to feel that it was he who was in the wrong, and not the boy!</div><div><br /></div><div>‘And there’s nothing else physically different?’ Bettina asked. ‘No!’ Parvez thought for a moment. ‘But he is growing a beard.’</div><div><br /></div><div>One night, after sitting with Bettina in an all-night coffee shop, Parvez came home particularly late. Reluctantly he and Bettina had abandoned their only explanation, the drug theory, for Parvez had found nothing resembling any drug in Ali’s room. Besides, Ali wasn’t selling his belongings. He threw them out, gave them away or donated them to charity shops.</div><div><br /></div><div>Standing in the hall, Parvez heard his boy’s alarm clock go off. Parvez hurried into his bedroom where his wife was still awake, sewing in bed. He ordered her to sit down and keep quiet, though she had neither stood up nor said a word. From this post, and with her watching him curiously, he observed his son through the crack of the door.</div><div><br /></div><div>The boy went into the bathroom to wash. When he returned to his room Parvez sprang across the hall and set his ear at Ali’s door. A muttering sound came from within. Parvez was puzzled but relieved.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once this clue had been established, Parvez watched him at other times. The boy was praying. Without fail, when he was at home, he prayed five times a day.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez had grown up in Lahore where all the boys had been taught the Koran. To stop him falling asleep when he studied, the Moulvi had attached a piece of string to the ceiling and tied it to Parvez’s hair, so that if his head fell forward, he would instantly awake. After this indignity Parvez had avoided all religions. Not that the other taxi drivers had more respect. In fact they made jokes about the local mullahs walking around with their caps and beards, thinking they could tell people how to live, while their eyes roved over the boys and girls in their care.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez described to Bettina what he had discovered. He informed the men in the taxi office. The friends, who had been so curious before, now became oddly silent. They could hardly condemn the boy for his devotions.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez decided to take a night off and go out with the boy. They could talk things over. He wanted to hear how things were going at college; he wanted to tell him stories about their family in Pakistan. More than anything he yearned to understand how Ali had discovered the ‘spiritual dimension’, as Bettina described it.</div><div><br /></div><div>To Parvez’s surprise, the boy refused to accompany him. He claimed he had an appointment. Parvez had to insist that no appointment could be more important than that of a son with his father, and, reluctantly, Ali accompanied him.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next day, Parvez went immediately to the street where Bettina stood in the rain wearing high heels, a short skirt and a long mac on top, which she would hopefully open at passing cars.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Get in, get in!’ he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>They drove out across the moors and parked at the spot where, on better days, with a view unimpeded for many miles by nothing but wild deer and horses, they’d lie back, with their eyes half-closed, saying ‘this is the life’. This time Parvez was trembling.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bettina put her arms around him.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What’s happened?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I’ve just had the worst experience of my life.’</div><div><br /></div><div>As Bettina rubbed his head Parvez told her that the previous evening, as he and his son studied the menu, the waiter, whom Parvez knew, brought him his usual whisky and water. Parvez was so nervous he had even prepared a question. He was going to ask Ali if he was worried about his imminent exams. But first, wanting to relax, he loosened his tie, crunched a popadom and took a long drink.</div><div><br /></div><div>Before Parvez could speak, Ali made a face.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Don’t you know it’s wrong to drink alcohol?’ he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘He spoke to me very harshly,’ Parvez said to Bettina. ‘I was about to castigate the boy for being insolent, but managed to control myself.’</div><div><br /></div><div>He had explained patiently that for years he had worked more than ten hours a day, had few enjoyments or hobbies and never went on holiday. Surely it wasn’t a crime to have a drink when he wanted one?</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But it is forbidden,’ the boy said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez shrugged, ‘I know.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘And so is gambling, isn’t it?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Yes. But surely we are only human?’</div><div><br /></div><div>Each time Parvez took a drink, the boy made, as an accompaniment, some kind of wince or fastidious face. This made Parvez drink more quickly. The waiter, wanting to please his friend, brought another glass of whisky. Parvez knew he was getting drunk, but he couldn’t stop himself. Ali had a horrible look, full of disgust and censure. It was as if he hated his father.</div><div><br /></div><div>Halfway through the meal Parvez suddenly lost his temper and threw a plate on the floor. He felt like ripping the cloth from the table, but the waiters and other customers were staring at him. Yet he wouldn’t stand for his own son telling him the difference between right and wrong. He knew he wasn’t a bad man. He had a conscience. There were a few things of which he was ashamed, but on the whole he had lived a decent life. ‘When have I had time to be wicked?’ he told Ali.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a low monotonous voice the boy explained that Parvez had not, in fact, lived a good life. He had broken countless rules of the Koran.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘For instance?’ Parvez demanded. Ali didn’t need to think. As if he had been waiting for this moment, he asked his father if he didn’t relish pork pies.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Well?’</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez couldn’t deny that he loved crispy bacon smothered with mushrooms and mustard and sandwiched between slices of fried bread. In fact he ate this for breakfast every morning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ali then reminded him that Parvez had ordered his own wife to cook pork sausages, saying to her, ‘You’re not in the village now, this is England. We have to fit in!’ Parvez was so annoyed and perplexed by this attack that he called for more drink.</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem is this,’ the boy said. He leaned across the table. For the first time that night his eyes were alive. ‘You are too implicated in Western civilisation.’</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez burped; he thought he was going to choke. ‘Implicated!’ he said. ‘But we live here!’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘The Western materialists hate us,’ Ali said. ‘Papa, how can you love something which hates you?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What is the answer then?’ Parvez said miserably, ‘According to you.’</div><div><br /></div><div>Ali didn’t need to think. He addressed his father fluently, as if Parvez were a rowdy crowd that had to be quelled and convinced. The Law of Islam would rule the world; the skin of the infidel would burn off again and again; the Jews and Christers would be routed. The West was a sink of hypocrites, adulterers, homo-sexuals, drag-takers and prostitutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>As Ali talked, Parvez looked out of the window as if to check that they were still in London.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘My people have taken enough. If the persecution doesn’t stop there will be jihad. I, and millions of others, will gladly give our lives for the cause.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But why, why?’ Parvez said.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘For us the reward will be in paradise.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Paradise!’</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, as Parvez’s eyes filled with tears, the boy urged him to mend his ways;</div><div><br /></div><div>‘How is that possible?’ Parvez asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Pray,’ said Ali. ‘Pray beside me.’</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez called for the bill and ushered his boy out of there as soon as he was able.</div><div><br /></div><div>He couldn’t take any more. Ali sounded as if he’d swallowed someone else’s voice.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the way home the boy sat in the back of the taxi as if he were a customer.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What has made you like this?’ Parvez asked him, afraid that somehow he was to blame for all this. ‘Is there a particular event which has influenced you?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Living in this country.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But I love England,’ Parvez said, watching his boy in the mirror. ‘They let you do almost anything here.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘That is the problem,’ he replied.</div><div><br /></div><div>For the first time in years Parvez couldn’t see straight. He knocked the side of the car against a lorry, ripping off the wing mirror. They were lucky not to have been stopped by the police: Parvez would have lost his licence and therefore his job.</div><div><br /></div><div>Getting out of the car back at the house, Parvez stumbled and fell in the road, scraping his hands and ripping his trousers. He managed to haul himself up. The boy didn’t even offer him his hand.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez told Bettina he was willing to pray, if that was what the boy wanted, if it would dislodge the pitiless look from his eyes.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But what I object to’, he said, ‘is being told by my own son that I am going to hell!’</div><div><br /></div><div>What finished Parvez off was that the boy had said he was giving up accountancy. When Parvez had asked why, Ali said sarcastically that it was obvious.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Western education cultivates an anti-religious attitude.’</div><div><br /></div><div>And in the world of accountants it was usual to meet women, drink alcohol and practise usury.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But it’s well-paid work,’ Parvez argued. ‘For years you’ve been preparing!’</div><div><br /></div><div>Ali said he was going to begin to work in prisons, with poor Muslims who were struggling to maintain their purity in the face of corruption. Finally, at the end of the evening, as Ali went up to bed, he had asked his father why he didn’t have a beard, or at least a moustache.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I feel as if I’ve lost my son,’ Parvez told Bettina. ‘I can’t bear to be looked at as if I’m a criminal. I’ve decided what to do.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What is it?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I’m going to tell him to pick up his prayer mat and get out of my house. It will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but tonight I’m going to do it.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But you mustn’t give up on him,’ said Bettina. ‘Many young people fall into cults and superstitious groups. It doesn’t mean they’ll always feel the same way.</div><div><br /></div><div>She said Parvez had to stick by his boy, giving him support, until he came through. Parvez was persuaded that she was right, even though he didn’t feel like giving his son more love when he had hardly been thanked for all he had already given.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless, Parvez tried to endure his son’s looks and reproaches. He attempted to make conversation about his beliefs. But if Parvez ventured any criticism, Ali always had a brusque reply. On one occasion Ali accused Parvez of ‘grovelling’ to the whites; in contrast, he explained, he was not ‘inferior’; there was more to the world than the West, though the West always thought it was best.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘How is it you know that,’ Parvez said, ‘seeing as you’ve never left England?’</div><div><br /></div><div>Ali replied with a look of contempt.</div><div><br /></div><div>One night, having ensured there was no alcohol on his breath, Parvez sat down at the kitchen table with Ali. He hoped Ali would compliment him on the beard he was growing but Ali didn’t appear to notice.</div><div><br /></div><div>The previous day Parvez had been telling Bettina that he thought people in the West sometimes felt inwardly empty and that people needed a philosophy to live by.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Yes,’ said Bettina. ‘That’s the answer. You must tell him what your philosophy of life is. Then he will understand that there are other beliefs.’</div><div><br /></div><div>After some fatiguing consideration, Parvez was ready to begin. The boy watched him as if he expected nothing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Haltingly Parvez said that people had to treat one another with respect, particularly children their parents. This did seem, for a moment, to affect the boy. Heartened, Parvez continued. In his view this life was all there was and when you died you rotted in the earth. ‘Grass and flowers will grow out of me, but something of me will live on.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘How?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘In other people. I will continue – in you.’ At this the boy appeared a little distressed.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘And your grandchildren,’ Parvez added for good measure. ‘But while I am here on earth I want to make the best of it. And I want you to, as well!’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What d’you mean by “make the best of it”?’ asked the boy.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Well,’ said Parvez. ‘For a start . . . you should enjoy yourself. Yes. Enjoy yourself without hurting others.’</div><div><br /></div><div>Ali said enjoyment was a ‘bottomless pit’.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘But I don’t mean enjoyment like that!’ said Parvez. ‘I mean the beauty of living!’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘All over the world our people are oppressed,’ was the boy’s reply.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I know,’ Parvez replied, not entirely sure who ‘our people’ were, ‘but still life is for living!’</div><div><br /></div><div>Ali said, ‘Real morality has existed for hundreds of years. Around the world millions and millions of people share my beliefs. Are you saying you are right and they are all wrong?’</div><div><br /></div><div>And Ali looked at his father with such aggressive confidence that Parvez could say no more.</div><div><br /></div><div>One evening Bettina was sitting in Parvez’s car, after visiting a client, when they passed a boy on the street.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘That’s my son,’ Parvez said suddenly. They were on the other side of town, in a poor district, where there were two mosques.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez set his face hard.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bettina turned to watch him. ‘Slow down then, slow down!’ She said, ‘He’s goodlooking.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reminds me of you. But with a more determined face. Please, can’t we stop?</div><div><br /></div><div>‘What for?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘I’d like to talk to him.’</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez turned the cab round and stopped beside the boy.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Coming home?’ Parvez asked. ‘It’s quite a way.’</div><div><br /></div><div>The sullen boy shrugged and got into the back seat. Bettina sat in the front. Parvez became aware of Bettina’s short skirt, gaudy rings and ice-blue eye-shadow. He became conscious that the smell of her perfume, which he loved, filled the cab. He opened the window.</div><div><br /></div><div>While Parvez drove as fast as he could, Bettina said gently to Ali, ‘Where have you been?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘The mosque,’ he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘And how are you getting on at college? Are you working hard?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Who are you to ask me these questions?’ he said, looking out of the window.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then they hit bad traffic and the car came to a standstill.</div><div><br /></div><div>By now Bettina had inadvertently laid her hand on Parvez’s shoulder. She said, ‘Your father, who is a good man, is very worried about you. You know he loves you more than his own life.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘You say he loves me,’ the boy said.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Yes!’ said Bettina.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Then why is he letting a woman like you touch him like that?’</div><div><br /></div><div>If Bettina looked at the boy in anger, he looked back at her with twice as much cold fury.</div><div><br /></div><div>She said, ‘What kind of woman am I that deserves to be spoken to like that?’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘You know,’ he said. ‘Now let me out.’</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Never,’ Parvez replied.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘Don’t worry, I’m getting out,’ Bettina said.</div><div><br /></div><div>‘No, don’t!’ said Parvez. But even as the car moved she opened the door, threw herself out and ran away across the road. Parvez shouted after her, several times called after her, but she had gone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez took Ali back to the house, saying nothing more to him. Ali went straight to his room. Parvez was unable to read the paper, watch television or even sit down. He kept pouring himself drinks.</div><div><br /></div><div>At last he went upstairs and paced up and down outside Ali’s room. When, finally, he opened the door, Ali was praying. The boy didn’t even glance his way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Parvez kicked him over. Then he dragged the boy up by his shirt and hit him. The boy fell back. Parvez hit him again. The boy’s face was bloody. Parvez was panting, he knew the boy was unreachable, but he struck him nonetheless. The boy neither covered himself nor retaliated; there was no fear in his eyes. He only said, through his split lip,</div><div><br /></div><div>‘So who’s the fanatic now?</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-55142880809475781132009-06-30T09:30:00.000-07:002009-06-30T09:33:01.771-07:00The Curious Case of Benjamin Button<div><i><b>By: F. Scott Fitzgerald</b></i></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter I</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anaesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing history I am about to set down will never be known.</div><div><br /></div><div>I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself. The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy. This was their first experience with the charming old custom of having babies--Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, at which institution Mr. Button himself had been known for four years by the somewhat obvious nickname of "Cuff."</div><div><br /></div><div>On the September morning consecrated to the enormous event he arose nervously at six o'clock dressed himself, adjusted an impeccable stock, and hurried forth through the streets of Baltimore to the hospital, to determine whether the darkness of the night had borne in new life upon its bosom.</div><div><br /></div><div>When he was approximately a hundred yards from the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene, the family physician, descending the front steps, rubbing his hands together with a washing movement--as all doctors are required to do by the unwritten ethics of their profession.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, began to run toward Doctor Keene with much less dignity than was expected from a Southern gentleman of that picturesque period. "Doctor Keene!" he called. "Oh, Doctor Keene!"</div><div><br /></div><div>The doctor heard him, faced around, and stood waiting, a curious expression settling on his harsh, medicinal face as Mr. Button drew near.</div><div><br /></div><div>"What happened?" demanded Mr. Button, as he came up in a gasping rush. "What was it? How is she" A boy? Who is it? What---"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Talk sense!" said Doctor Keene sharply, He appeared somewhat irritated.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Is the child born?" begged Mr. Button.</div><div><br /></div><div>Doctor Keene frowned. "Why, yes, I suppose so--after a fashion." Again he threw a curious glance at Mr. Button.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Is my wife all right?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Is it a boy or a girl?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Here now!" cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion of irritation," I'll ask you to go and see for yourself. Outrageous!" He snapped the last word out in almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering: "Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation? One more would ruin me--ruin anybody."</div><div><br /></div><div>"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Button appalled. "Triplets?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"No, not triplets!" answered the doctor cuttingly. "What's more, you can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor. I brought you into the world, young man, and I've been physician to your family for forty years, but I'm through with you! I don't want to see you or any of your relatives ever again! Good-bye!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Then he turned sharply, and without another word climbed into his phaeton, which was waiting at the curbstone, and drove severely away.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button stood there upon the sidewalk, stupefied and trembling from head to foot. What horrible mishap had occurred? He had suddenly lost all desire to go into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen--it was with the greatest difficulty that, a moment later, he forced himself to mount the steps and enter the front door.</div><div><br /></div><div>A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque gloom of the hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button approached her.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Good-morning," she remarked, looking up at him pleasantly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Good-morning. I--I am Mr. Button."</div><div><br /></div><div>At this a look of utter terror spread itself over girl's face. She rose to her feet and seemed about to fly from the hall, restraining herself only with the most apparent difficulty.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I want to see my child," said Mr. Button.</div><div><br /></div><div>The nurse gave a little scream. "Oh--of course!" she cried hysterically. "Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go--up!"</div><div><br /></div><div>She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button, bathed in cool perspiration, turned falteringly, and began to mount to the second floor. In the upper hall he addressed another nurse who approached him, basin in hand. "I'm Mr. Button," he managed to articulate. "I want to see my----"</div><div><br /></div><div>Clank! The basin clattered to the floor and rolled in the direction of the stairs. Clank! Clank! I began a methodical decent as if sharing in the general terror which this gentleman provoked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I want to see my child!" Mr. Button almost shrieked. He was on the verge of collapse.</div><div><br /></div><div>Clank! The basin reached the first floor. The nurse regained control of herself, and threw Mr. Button a look of hearty contempt.</div><div><br /></div><div>"All right, Mr. Button," she agreed in a hushed voice. "Very well! But if you knew what a state it's put us all in this morning! It's perfectly outrageous! The hospital will never have a ghost of a reputation after----"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Hurry!" he cried hoarsely. "I can't stand this!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Come this way, then, Mr. Button."</div><div><br /></div><div>He dragged himself after her. At the end of a long hall they reached a room from which proceeded a variety of howls--indeed, a room which, in later parlance, would have been known as the "crying-room." They entered.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," gasped Mr. Button, "which is mine?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"There!" said the nurse.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-coloured beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Am I mad?" thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into rage. "Is this some ghastly hospital joke?</div><div><br /></div><div>"It doesn't seem like a joke to us," replied the nurse severely. "And I don't know whether you're mad or not--but that is most certainly your child."</div><div><br /></div><div>The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button's forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake--he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten--a baby of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib in which it was reposing.</div><div><br /></div><div>The old man looked placidly from one to the other for a moment, and then suddenly spoke in a cracked and ancient voice. "Are you my father?" he demanded.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button and the nurse started violently.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Because if you are," went on the old man querulously, "I wish you'd get me out of this place--or, at least, get them to put a comfortable rocker in here,"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Where in God's name did you come from? Who are you?" burst out Mr. Button frantically.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I can't tell you exactly who I am," replied the querulous whine, "because I've only been born a few hours--but my last name is certainly Button."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You lie! You're an impostor!"</div><div><br /></div><div>The old man turned wearily to the nurse. "Nice way to welcome a new-born child," he complained in a weak voice. "Tell him he's wrong, why don't you?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You're wrong. Mr. Button," said the nurse severely. "This is your child, and you'll have to make the best of it. We're going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as possible-some time to-day."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Home?" repeated Mr. Button incredulously.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes, we can't have him here. We really can't, you know?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm right glad of it," whined the old man. "This is a fine place to keep a youngster of quiet tastes. With all this yelling and howling, I haven't been able to get a wink of sleep. I asked for something to eat"--here his voice rose to a shrill note of protest--"and they brought me a bottle of milk!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button, sank down upon a chair near his son and concealed his face in his hands. "My heavens!" he murmured, in an ecstasy of horror. "What will people say? What must I do?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You'll have to take him home," insisted the nurse--"immediately!"</div><div><br /></div><div>A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful clarity before the eyes of the tortured man--a picture of himself walking through the crowded streets of the city with this appalling apparition stalking by his side.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I can't. I can't," he moaned.</div><div><br /></div><div>People would stop to speak to him, and what was he going to say? He would have to introduce this--this septuagenarian: "This is my son, born early this morning." And then the old man would gather his blanket around him and they would plod on, past the bustling stores, the slave market--for a dark instant Mr. Button wished passionately that his son was black--past the luxurious houses of the residential district, past the home for the aged....</div><div><br /></div><div>"Come! Pull yourself together," commanded the nurse.</div><div><br /></div><div>"See here," the old man announced suddenly, "if you think I'm going to walk home in this blanket, you're entirely mistaken."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Babies always have blankets."</div><div><br /></div><div>With a malicious crackle the old man held up a small white swaddling garment. "Look!" he quavered. "This is what they had ready for me."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Babies always wear those," said the nurse primly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," said the old man, "this baby's not going to wear anything in about two minutes. This blanket itches. They might at least have given me a sheet."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Keep it on! Keep it on!" said Mr. Button hurriedly. He turned to the nurse. "What'll I do?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Go down town and buy your son some clothes."</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button's son's voice followed him down into the: hall: "And a cane, father. I want to have a cane."</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button banged the outer door savagely....</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter II</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"Good-morning," Mr. Button said nervously, to the clerk in the Chesapeake Dry Goods Company. "I want to buy some clothes for my child."</div><div><br /></div><div>"How old is your child, sir?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"About six hours," answered Mr. Button, without due consideration.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Babies' supply department in the rear."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why, I don't think--I'm not sure that's what I want. It's--he's an unusually large-size child. Exceptionally--ah large."</div><div><br /></div><div>"They have the largest child's sizes."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Where is the boys' department?" inquired Mr. Button, shifting his ground desperately. He felt that the clerk must surely scent his shameful secret.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Right here."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well----" He hesitated. The notion of dressing his son in men's clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only find a very large boy's suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain something of his own self-respect--not to mention his position in Baltimore society.</div><div><br /></div><div>But a frantic inspection of the boys' department revealed no suits to fit the new-born Button. He blamed the store, of course---in such cases it is the thing to blame the store.</div><div><br /></div><div>"How old did you say that boy of yours was?" demanded the clerk curiously.</div><div><br /></div><div>"He's--sixteen."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you said six hours. You'll find the youths' department in the next aisle."</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button turned miserably away. Then he stopped, brightened, and pointed his finger toward a dressed dummy in the window display. "There!" he exclaimed. "I'll take that suit, out there on the dummy."</div><div><br /></div><div>The clerk stared. "Why," he protested, "that's not a child's suit. At least it is, but it's for fancy dress. You could wear it yourself!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Wrap it up," insisted his customer nervously. "That's what I want."</div><div><br /></div><div>The astonished clerk obeyed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back at the hospital Mr. Button entered the nursery and almost threw the package at his son. "Here's your clothes," he snapped out.</div><div><br /></div><div>The old man untied the package and viewed the contents with a quizzical eye.</div><div><br /></div><div>"They look sort of funny to me," he complained, "I don't want to be made a monkey of--"</div><div><br /></div><div>"You've made a monkey of me!" retorted Mr. Button fiercely. "Never you mind how funny you look. Put them on--or I'll--or I'll spank you." He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling nevertheless that it was the proper thing to say.</div><div><br /></div><div>"All right, father"--this with a grotesque simulation of filial respect--"you've lived longer; you know best. Just as you say."</div><div><br /></div><div>As before, the sound of the word "father" caused Mr. Button to start violently.</div><div><br /></div><div>"And hurry."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm hurrying, father."</div><div><br /></div><div>When his son was dressed Mr. Button regarded him with depression. The costume consisted of dotted socks, pink pants, and a belted blouse with a wide white collar. Over the latter waved the long whitish beard, drooping almost to the waist. The effect was not good.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Wait!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button seized a hospital shears and with three quick snaps amputated a large section of the beard. But even with this improvement the ensemble fell far short of perfection. The remaining brush of scraggly hair, the watery eyes, the ancient teeth, seemed oddly out of tone with the gaiety of the costume. Mr. Button, however, was obdurate--he held out his hand. "Come along!" he said sternly.</div><div><br /></div><div>His son took the hand trustingly. "What are you going to call me, dad?" he quavered as they walked from the nursery--"just 'baby' for a while? till you think of a better name?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Button grunted. "I don't know," he answered harshly. "I think we'll call you Methuselah."</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter III</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Even after the new addition to the Button family had had his hair cut short and then dyed to a sparse unnatural black, had had his face shaved so dose that it glistened, and had been attired in small-boy clothes made to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for Button to ignore the fact that his son was a excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button--for it was by this name they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah--was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes under--were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby-nurse who had been engaged in advance left the house after one look, in a state of considerable indignation.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared that if Benjamin didn't like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that he should "play with it," whereupon the old man took it with--a weary expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at intervals throughout the day.</div><div><br /></div><div>There can be no doubt, though, that the rattle bored him, and that he found other and more soothing amusements when he was left alone. For instance, Mr. Button discovered one day that during the preceding week be had smoked more cigars than ever before--a phenomenon, which was explained a few days later when, entering the nursery unexpectedly, he found the room full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty expression on his face, trying to conceal the butt of a dark Havana. This, of course, called for a severe spanking, but Mr. Button found that he could not bring himself to administer it. He merely warned his son that he would "stunt his growth."</div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless he persisted in his attitude. He brought home lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion which he was creating--for himself at least--he passionately demanded of the clerk in the toy-store whether "the paint would come oft the pink duck if the baby put it in his mouth." But, despite all his father's efforts, Benjamin refused to be interested. He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, over which he would pore through an afternoon, while his cotton cows and his Noah's ark were left neglected on the floor. Against such a stubbornness Mr. Button's efforts were of little avail.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite racked their brains for compliments to give to the parents--and finally hit upon the ingenious device of declaring that the baby resembled his grandfather, a fact which, due to the standard state of decay common to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's grandfather was furiously insulted.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he found it. Several small boys were brought to see him, and he spent a stiff-jointed afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops and marbles--he even managed, quite accidentally, to break a kitchen window with a stone from a sling shot, a feat which secretly delighted his father.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thereafter Benjamin contrived to break something every day, but he did these things only because they were expected of him, and because he was by nature obliging.</div><div><br /></div><div>When his grandfather's initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another's company. They would sit for hours, these two, so far apart in age and experience, and, like old cronies, discuss with tireless monotony the slow events of the day. Benjamin felt more at ease in his grandfather's presence than in his parents'--they seemed always somewhat in awe of him and, despite the dictatorial authority they exercised over him, frequently addressed him as "Mr."</div><div><br /></div><div>He was as puzzled as any one else at the apparently advanced age of his mind and body at birth. He read up on it in the medical journal, but found that no such case had been previously recorded. At his father's urging he made an honest attempt to play with other boys, and frequently he joined in the milder games--football shook him up too much, and he feared that in case of a fracture his ancient bones would refuse to knit.</div><div><br /></div><div>When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where he initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, of weaving coloured maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard necklaces. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit which both irritated and frightened his young teacher. To his relief she complained to his parents, and he was removed from the school. The Roger Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.</div><div><br /></div><div>By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no longer felt that he was different from any other child--except when some curious anomaly reminded them of the fact. But one day a few weeks after his twelfth birthday, while looking in the mirror, Benjamin made, or thought he made, an astonishing discovery. Did his eyes deceive him, or had his hair turned in the dozen years of his life from white to iron-gray under its concealing dye? Was the network of wrinkles on his face becoming less pronounced? Was his skin healthier and firmer, with even a touch of ruddy winter colour? He could not tell. He knew that he no longer stooped, and that his physical condition had improved since the early days of his life.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Can it be----?" he thought to himself, or, rather, scarcely dared to think.</div><div><br /></div><div>He went to his father. "I am grown," he announced determinedly. "I want to put on long trousers."</div><div><br /></div><div>His father hesitated. "Well," he said finally, "I don't know. Fourteen is the age for putting on long trousers--and you are only twelve."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But you'll have to admit," protested Benjamin, "that I'm big for my age."</div><div><br /></div><div>His father looked at him with illusory speculation. "Oh, I'm not so sure of that," he said. "I was as big as you when I was twelve."</div><div><br /></div><div>This was not true-it was all part of Roger Button's silent agreement with himself to believe in his son's normality.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally a compromise was reached. Benjamin was to continue to dye his hair. He was to make a better attempt to play with boys of his own age. He was not to wear his spectacles or carry a cane in the street. In return for these concessions he was allowed his first suit of long trousers....</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter IV</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Of the life of Benjamin Button between his twelfth and twenty-first year I intend to say little. Suffice to record that they were years of normal ungrowth. When Benjamin was eighteen he was erect as a man of fifty; he had more hair and it was of a dark gray; his step was firm, his voice had lost its cracked quaver and descended to a healthy baritone. So his father sent him up to Connecticut to take examinations for entrance to Yale College. Benjamin passed his examination and became a member of the freshman class.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the third day following his matriculation he received a notification from Mr. Hart, the college registrar, to call at his office and arrange his schedule. Benjamin, glancing in the mirror, decided that his hair needed a new application of its brown dye, but an anxious inspection of his bureau drawer disclosed that the dye bottle was not there. Then he remembered--he had emptied it the day before and thrown it away.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was in a dilemma. He was due at the registrar's in five minutes. There seemed to be no help for it--he must go as he was. He did.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Good-morning," said the registrar politely. "You've come to inquire about your son."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Why, as a matter of fact, my name's Button----" began Benjamin, but Mr. Hart cut him off.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Button. I'm expecting your son here any minute."</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's me!" burst out Benjamin. "I'm a freshman."</div><div><br /></div><div>"What!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm a freshman."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Surely you're joking."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Not at all."</div><div><br /></div><div>The registrar frowned and glanced at a card before him. "Why, I have Mr. Benjamin Button's age down here as eighteen."</div><div><br /></div><div>"That's my age," asserted Benjamin, flushing slightly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The registrar eyed him wearily. "Now surely, Mr. Button, you don't expect me to believe that."</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin smiled wearily. "I am eighteen," he repeated.</div><div><br /></div><div>The registrar pointed sternly to the door. "Get out," he said. "Get out of college and get out of town. You are a dangerous lunatic."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I am eighteen."</div><div><br /></div><div>Mr. Hart opened the door. "The idea!" he shouted. "A man of your age trying to enter here as a freshman. Eighteen years old, are you? Well, I'll give you eighteen minutes to get out of town."</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin Button walked with dignity from the room, and half a dozen undergraduates, who were waiting in the hall, followed him curiously with their eyes. When he had gone a little way he turned around, faced the infuriated registrar, who was still standing in the door-way, and repeated in a firm voice: "I am eighteen years old."</div><div><br /></div><div>To a chorus of titters which went up from the group of undergraduates, Benjamin walked away.</div><div><br /></div><div>But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his melancholy walk to the railroad station he found that he was being followed by a group, then by a swarm, and finally by a dense mass of undergraduates. The word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance examinations for Yale and attempted to palm himself off as a youth of eighteen. A fever of excitement permeated the college. Men ran hatless out of classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined the mob, professors' wives with bonnets awry and bustles out of position, ran shouting after the procession, from which proceeded a continual succession of remarks aimed at the tender sensibilities of Benjamin Button.</div><div><br /></div><div>"He must be the wandering Jew!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"He ought to go to prep school at his age!"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Look at the infant prodigy!" "He thought this was the old men's home."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Go up to Harvard!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin increased his gait, and soon he was running. He would show them! He would go to Harvard, and then they would regret these ill-considered taunts!</div><div><br /></div><div>Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his head from the window. "You'll regret this!" he shouted.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Ha-ha!" the undergraduates laughed. "Ha-ha-ha!" It was the biggest mistake that Yale College had ever made....</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter V</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he signalised his birthday by going to work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was in that same year that he began "going out socially"--that is, his father insisted on taking him to several fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and he and his son were more and more companionable--in fact, since Benjamin had ceased to dye his hair (which was still grayish) they appeared about the same age, and could have passed for brothers.</div><div><br /></div><div>One night in August they got into the phaeton attired in their full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins' country house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a gorgeous evening. A full moon drenched the road to the lustreless colour of platinum, and late-blooming harvest flowers breathed into the motionless air aromas that were like low, half-heard laughter. The open country, carpeted for rods around with bright wheat, was translucent as in the day. It was almost impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty of the sky--almost.</div><div><br /></div><div>"There's a great future in the dry-goods business," Roger Button was saying. He was not a spiritual man--his aesthetic sense was rudimentary.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Old fellows like me can't learn new tricks," he observed profoundly. "It's you youngsters with energy and vitality that have the great future before you."</div><div><br /></div><div>Far up the road the lights of the Shevlins' country house drifted into view, and presently there was a sighing sound that crept persistently toward them--it might have been the fine plaint of violins or the rustle of the silver wheat under the moon.</div><div><br /></div><div>They pulled up behind a handsome brougham whose passengers were disembarking at the door. A lady got out, then an elderly gentleman, then another young lady, beautiful as sin. Benjamin started; an almost chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose the very elements of his body. A rigour passed over him, blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love.</div><div><br /></div><div>The girl was slender and frail, with hair that was ashen under the moon and honey-coloured under the sputtering gas-lamps of the porch. Over her shoulders was thrown a Spanish mantilla of softest yellow, butterflied in black; her feet were glittering buttons at the hem of her bustled dress.</div><div><br /></div><div>Roger Button leaned over to his son. "That," he said, "is young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of General Moncrief."</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin nodded coldly. "Pretty little thing," he said indifferently. But when the negro boy had led the buggy away, he added: "Dad, you might introduce me to her."</div><div><br /></div><div>They approached a group, of which Miss Moncrief was the centre. Reared in the old tradition, she curtsied low before Benjamin. Yes, he might have a dance. He thanked her and walked away--staggered away.</div><div><br /></div><div>The interval until the time for his turn should arrive dragged itself out interminably. He stood close to the wall, silent, inscrutable, watching with murderous eyes the young bloods of Baltimore as they eddied around Hildegarde Moncrief, passionate admiration in their faces. How obnoxious they seemed to Benjamin; how intolerably rosy! Their curling brown whiskers aroused in him a feeling equivalent to indigestion.</div><div><br /></div><div>But when his own time came, and he drifted with her out upon the changing floor to the music of the latest waltz from Paris, his jealousies and anxieties melted from him like a mantle of snow. Blind with enchantment, he felt that life was just beginning.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You and your brother got here just as we did, didn't you?" asked Hildegarde, looking up at him with eyes that were like bright blue enamel.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father's brother, would it be best to enlighten her? He remembered his experience at Yale, so he decided against it. It would be rude to contradict a lady; it would be criminal to mar this exquisite occasion with the grotesque story of his origin. Later, perhaps. So he nodded, smiled, listened, was happy.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I like men of your age," Hildegarde told him. "Young boys are so idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, and how much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to appreciate women."</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal--with an effort he choked back the impulse. "You're just the romantic age," she continued--"fifty. Twenty-five is too wordly-wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is--oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty."</div><div><br /></div><div>Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed passionately to be fifty.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I've always said," went on Hildegarde, "that I'd rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than many a man of thirty and take care of him."</div><div><br /></div><div>For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed in a honey-coloured mist. Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they discovered that they were marvellously in accord on all the questions of the day. She was to go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then they would discuss all these questions further.</div><div><br /></div><div>Going home in the phaeton just before the crack of dawn, when the first bees were humming and the fading moon glimmered in the cool dew, Benjamin knew vaguely that his father was discussing wholesale hardware.</div><div><br /></div><div>".... And what do you think should merit our biggest attention after hammers and nails?" the elder Button was saying.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Love," replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Lugs?" exclaimed Roger Button, "Why, I've just covered the question of lugs."</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes just as the eastern sky was suddenly cracked with light, and an oriole yawned piercingly in the quickening trees...</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter VI</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde Moncrief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say "made known," for General Moncrief declared he would rather fall upon his sword than announce it), the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish pitch. The almost forgotten story of Benjamin's birth was remembered and sent out upon the winds of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was said that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button, that he was his brother who had been in prison for forty years, that he was John Wilkes Booth in disguise--and, finally, that he had two small conical horns sprouting from his head.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the case with fascinating sketches which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish, to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. He became known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as is usually the case, had a very small circulation.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, every one agreed with General Moncrief that it was "criminal" for a lovely girl who could have married any beau in Baltimore to throw herself into the arms of a man who was assuredly fifty. In vain Mr. Roger Button published Us son's birth certificate in large type in the Baltimore Blaze. No one believed it. You had only to look at Benjamin and see.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the part of the two people most concerned there was no wavering. So many of the stories about her fiance were false that Hildegarde refused stubbornly to believe even the true one. In vain General Moncrief pointed out to her the high mortality among men of fifty--or, at least, among men who looked fifty; in vain he told her of the instability of the wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosen to marry for mellowness, and marry she did....</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter VII</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde Moncrief were mistaken. The wholesale hardware business prospered amazingly. In the fifteen years between Benjamin Button's marriage in 1880 and his father's retirement in 1895, the family fortune was doubled--and this was due largely to the younger member of the firm.</div><div><br /></div><div>Needless to say, Baltimore eventually received the couple to its bosom. Even old General Moncrief became reconciled to his son-in-law when Benjamin gave him the money to bring out his History of the Civil War in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nine prominent publishers.</div><div><br /></div><div>In Benjamin himself fifteen years had wrought many changes. It seemed to him that the blood flowed with new vigour through his veins. It began to be a pleasure to rise in the morning, to walk with an active step along the busy, sunny street, to work untiringly with his shipments of hammers and his cargoes of nails. It was in 1890 that he executed his famous business coup: he brought up the suggestion that all nails used in nailing up the boxes in which nails are shipped are the property of the shippee, a proposal which became a statute, was approved by Chief Justice Fossile, and saved Roger Button and Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than six hundred nails every year.</div><div><br /></div><div>In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and more attracted by the gay side of life. It was typical of his growing enthusiasm for pleasure that he was the first man in the city of Baltimore to own and run an automobile. Meeting him on the street, his contemporaries would stare enviously at the picture he made of health and vitality.</div><div><br /></div><div>"He seems to grow younger every year," they would remark. And if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give a proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what amounted to adulation.</div><div><br /></div><div>And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well to pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him.</div><div><br /></div><div>At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-coloured hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery--moreover, and, most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it been she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners--now conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 his home had for him so little charm that he decided to join the army. With his business influence he obtained a commission as captain, and proved so adaptable to the work that he was made a major, and finally a lieutenant-colonel just in time to participate in the celebrated charge up San Juan Hill. He was slightly wounded, and received a medal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and excitement of array life that he regretted to give it up, but his business required attention, so he resigned his commission and came home. He was met at the station by a brass band and escorted to his house.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter VIII</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on the porch, and even as he kissed her he felt with a sinking of the heart that these three years had taken their toll. She was a woman of forty now, with a faint skirmish line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressed him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar mirror--he went closer and examined his own face with anxiety, comparing it after a moment with a photograph of himself in uniform taken just before the war.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Good Lord!" he said aloud. The process was continuing. There was no doubt of it--he looked now like a man of thirty. Instead of being delighted, he was uneasy--he was growing younger. He had hitherto hoped that once he reached a bodily age equivalent to his age in years, the grotesque phenomenon which had marked his birth would cease to function. He shuddered. His destiny seemed to him awful, incredible.</div><div><br /></div><div>When he came downstairs Hildegarde was waiting for him. She appeared annoyed, and he wondered if she had at last discovered that there was something amiss. It was with an effort to relieve the tension between them that he broached the matter at dinner in what he considered a delicate way.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," he remarked lightly, "everybody says I look younger than ever."</div><div><br /></div><div>Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed. "Do you think it's anything to boast about?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm not boasting," he asserted uncomfortably. She sniffed again. "The idea," she said, and after a moment: "I should think you'd have enough pride to stop it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"How can I?" he demanded.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very considerate."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think you don't want to be like any one else. You always have been that way, and you always will be. But just think how it would be if every one else looked at things as you do--what would the world be like?"</div><div><br /></div><div>As this was an inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made no reply, and from that time on a chasm began to widen between them. He wondered what possible fascination she had ever exercised over him.</div><div><br /></div><div>To add to the breach, he found, as the new century gathered headway, that his thirst for gaiety grew stronger. Never a party of any kind in the city of Baltimore but he was there, dancing with the prettiest of the young married women, chatting with the most popular of the debutantes, and finding their company charming, while his wife, a dowager of evil omen, sat among the chaperons, now in haughty disapproval, and now following him with solemn, puzzled, and reproachful eyes.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife." They had forgotten--as people inevitably forget--that back in 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this same ill-matched pair.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by his many new interests. He took up golf and made a great success of it. He went in for dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and in 1908 he was considered proficient at the "Maxine," while in 1909 his "Castle Walk" was the envy of every young man in town.</div><div><br /></div><div>His social activities, of course, interfered to some extent with his business, but then he had worked hard at wholesale hardware for twenty-five years and felt that he could soon hand it on to his son, Roscoe, who had recently graduated from Harvard.</div><div><br /></div><div>He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each other. This pleased Benjamin--he soon forgot the insidious fear which had come over him on his return from the Spanish-American War, and grew to take a naive pleasure in his appearance. There was only one fly in the delicious ointment--he hated to appear in public with his wife. Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feel absurd....</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter IX</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>One September day in 1910--a few years after Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe Button--a man, apparently about twenty years old, entered himself as a freshman at Harvard University in Cambridge. He did not make the mistake of announcing that he would never see fifty again, nor did he mention the fact that his son had been graduated from the same institution ten years before.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a prominent position in the class, partly because he seemed a little older than the other freshmen, whose average age was about eighteen.</div><div><br /></div><div>But his success was largely due to the fact that in the football game with Yale he played so brilliantly, with so much dash and with such a cold, remorseless anger that he scored seven touchdowns and fourteen field goals for Harvard, and caused one entire eleven of Yale men to be carried singly from the field, unconscious. He was the most celebrated man in college.</div><div><br /></div><div>Strange to say, in his third or junior year he was scarcely able to "make" the team. The coaches said that he had lost weight, and it seemed to the more observant among them that he was not quite as tall as before. He made no touchdowns--indeed, he was retained on the team chiefly in hope that his enormous reputation would bring terror and disorganisation to the Yale team.</div><div><br /></div><div>In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had grown so slight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for a freshman, an incident which humiliated him terribly. He became known as something of a prodigy--a senior who was surely no more than sixteen--and he was often shocked at the worldliness of some of his classmates. His studies seemed harder to him--he felt that they were too advanced. He had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas's, the famous preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared for college, and he determined after his graduation to enter himself at St. Midas's, where the sheltered life among boys his own size would be more congenial to him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore with his Harvard diploma in his pocket. Hildegarde was now residing in Italy, so Benjamin went to live with his son, Roscoe. But though he was welcomed in a general way there was obviously no heartiness in Roscoe's feeling toward him--there was even perceptible a tendency on his son's part to think that Benjamin, as he moped about the house in adolescent mooniness, was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now and prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out in connection with his family.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin, no longer persona grata with the debutantes and younger college set, found himself left much done, except for the companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in the neighbourhood. His idea of going to St. Midas's school recurred to him.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over and over that I want to go to prep, school."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter was distasteful to him, and he wished to avoid a discussion.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll have to enter me and take me up there."</div><div><br /></div><div>"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His eyes narrowed and he looked uneasily at his father. "As a matter of fact," he added, "you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You better pull up short. You better--you better"--he paused and his face crimsoned as he sought for words--"you better turn right around and start back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't funny any longer. You--you behave yourself!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.</div><div><br /></div><div>"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors are in the house I want you to call me 'Uncle'--not 'Roscoe,' but 'Uncle,' do you understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my first name. Perhaps you'd better call me 'Uncle' all the time, so you'll get used to it."</div><div><br /></div><div>With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away....</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter X</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered dismally upstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved for three months, but he could find nothing on his face but a faint white down with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the proposition that he should wear eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early years was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him ashamed. He wept and Roscoe had reluctantly relented.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, The Boy Scouts in Bimini Bay, and began to read. But he found himself thinking persistently about the war. America had joined the Allied cause during the preceding month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen was the minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which was fifty-seven, would have disqualified him, anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared with a letter bearing a large official legend in the corner and addressed to Mr. Benjamin Button. Benjamin tore it open eagerly, and read the enclosure with delight. It informed him that many reserve officers who had served in the Spanish-American War were being called back into service with a higher rank, and it enclosed his commission as brigadier-general in the United States army with orders to report immediately.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin jumped to his feet fairly quivering with enthusiasm. This was what he had wanted. He seized his cap, and ten minutes later he had entered a large tailoring establishment on Charles Street, and asked in his uncertain treble to be measured for a uniform.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Want to play soldier, sonny?" demanded a clerk casually.</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin flushed. "Say! Never mind what I want!" he retorted angrily. "My name's Button and I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so you know I'm good for it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," admitted the clerk hesitantly, "if you're not, I guess your daddy is, all right."</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was completed. He had difficulty in obtaining the proper general's insignia because the dealer kept insisting to Benjamin that a nice V.W.C.A. badge would look just as well and be much more fun to play with.</div><div><br /></div><div>Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and proceeded by train to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina, where he was to command an infantry brigade. On a sultry April day he approached the entrance to the camp, paid off the taxicab which had brought him from the station, and turned to the sentry on guard.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Get some one to handle my luggage!" he said briskly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sentry eyed him reproachfully. "Say," he remarked, "where you goin' with the general's duds, sonny?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War, whirled upon him with fire in his eye, but with, alas, a changing treble voice.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Come to attention!" he tried to thunder; he paused for breath--then suddenly he saw the sentry snap his heels together and bring his rifle to the present. Benjamin concealed a smile of gratification, but when he glanced around his smile faded. It was not he who had inspired obedience, but an imposing artillery colonel who was approaching on horseback.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Colonel!" called Benjamin shrilly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The colonel came up, drew rein, and looked coolly down at him with a twinkle in his eyes. "Whose little boy are you?" he demanded kindly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I'll soon darn well show you whose little boy I am!" retorted Benjamin in a ferocious voice. "Get down off that horse!"</div><div><br /></div><div>The colonel roared with laughter.</div><div><br /></div><div>"You want him, eh, general?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Here!" cried Benjamin desperately. "Read this." And he thrust his commission toward the colonel. The colonel read it, his eyes popping from their sockets. "Where'd you get this?" he demanded, slipping the document into his own pocket. "I got it from the Government, as you'll soon find out!" "You come along with me," said the colonel with a peculiar look. "We'll go up to headquarters and talk this over. Come along." The colonel turned and began walking his horse in the direction of headquarters. There was nothing for Benjamin to do but follow with as much dignity as possible--meanwhile promising himself a stern revenge. But this revenge did not materialise. Two days later, however, his son Roscoe materialised from Baltimore, hot and cross from a hasty trip, and escorted the weeping general, sans uniform, back to his home.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Chapter XI</b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. During the attendant festivities, however, no one thought it "the thing" to mention, that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who played around the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was the new baby's own grandfather.</div><div><br /></div><div>No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face was crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his presence was a source of torment. In the idiom of his generation Roscoe did not consider the matter "efficient." It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a "red-blooded he-man"--this was Roscoe's favourite expression--but in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that "live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scale was--was--was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested.</div><div><br /></div><div>Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old enough to play childish games with little Benjamin under the supervision of the same nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day, and Benjamin found that playing with little strips of coloured paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the world. Once he was bad and had to stand in the corner--then he cried--but for the most part there were gay hours in the cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows and Miss Bailey's kind hand resting for a moment now and then in his tousled hair.</div><div><br /></div><div>Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a year, but Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy. Sometimes when other tots talked about what they would do when they grew up a shadow would cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he realised that those were things in which he was never to share.</div><div><br /></div><div>The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what the bright shining strips of paper were for. He cried because the other boys were bigger than he, and he was afraid of them. The teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand he could not understand at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana, in her starched gingham dress, became the centre of his tiny world. On bright days they walked in the park; Nana would point at a great gray monster and say "elephant," and Benjamin would say it after her, and when he was being undressed for bed that night he would say it over and over aloud to her: "Elyphant, elyphant, elyphant." Sometimes Nana let him jump on the bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly right it would bounce you up on your feet again, and if you said "Ah" for a long time while you jumped you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.</div><div><br /></div><div>He loved to take a big cane from the hat-rack and go around hitting chairs and tables with it and saying: "Fight, fight, fight." When there were people there the old ladies would cluck at him, which interested him, and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which he submitted to with mild boredom. And when the long day was done at five o'clock he would go upstairs with Nana and be fed on oatmeal and nice soft mushy foods with a spoon.</div><div><br /></div><div>There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at just before his twilight bed hour and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes were sleepy--there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.</div><div><br /></div><div>The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.</div><div><br /></div><div>He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days passed--there was only his crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was hungry he cried--that was all. Through the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and darkness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-12717345149923305882009-06-29T06:43:00.000-07:002009-06-29T06:45:04.979-07:00Jokester<div><i><b>By: Isaac Asimov</b></i></div><div><br /></div><div>Noel Meyerhof consulted the list he had prepared and chose which item was to be first. As usual, he relied mainly on intuition.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He was dwarfed by the machine he faced, though only the smallest portion of the latter was in view. That didn't matter. He spoke with the offhand confidence of one who thoroughly knew he was master.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Johnson," he said, "came home unexpectedly from a business trip to find his wife in the arms of his best friend. He staggered back and said, 'Max! I'm married to the lady so I have to. But why you?'"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof thought: Okay, let that trickle down into its guts and gurgle about a bit.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And a voice behind him said, "Hey."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof erased the sound of that monosyllable and put the circuit he was using into neutral. He whirled and said, "I'm working. Don't you knock?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He did not smile as he customarily did in greeting Timothy Whistler, a senior analyst with whom he dealt as often as with any. He frowned as he would have for an interruption by a stranger, wrinkling his thin face into a distortion that seemed to extend to his hair, rumpling it more than ever.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler shrugged. He wore his white lab coat with his fists pressing down within its pockets and creasing it into tense vertical lines. "I knocked. You didn't answer. The operations signal wasn't on."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof grunted. It wasn't at that. He'd been thinking about this new project too intensively and he was forgetting little details.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And yet he could scarcely blame himself for that. This thing was important.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He didn't know why it was, of course. Grand Masters rarely did. That's what made them Grand Masters; the fact that they were beyond reason. How else could the human mind keep up with that ten-mile-long lump of solidified reason that men called Multivac, the most complex computer ever built?</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof said, "I _am_ working. Is there something important on your mind?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Nothing that can't be postponed. There are a few holes in the answer on the hyperspatial--" Whistler did a double take and his face took on a rueful look of uncertainty. "_Working_?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Yes. What about it?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"But--" He looked about, staring into the crannies of the shallow room that faced the banks upon banks of relays that formed a small portion of Multivac. "There isn't anyone here at that."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Who said there was, or should be?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You were telling one of your jokes, weren't you?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler forced a smile. "Don't tell me you were telling a joke to Multivac?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof stiffened. "Why not?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Were you?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Yes."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Why?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof stared the other down. "I don't have to account to you. Or to anyone."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Good Lord, of course not. I was curious, that's all.... But then, if you're working, I'll leave." He looked about once more, frowning.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Do so," said Meyerhof. His eyes followed the other out and then he activated the operations signal with a savage punch of his finger.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He strode the length of the room and back, getting himself in hand. Damn Whistler! Damn them all! Because he didn't bother to hold those technicians, analysts and mechanics at the proper social distance, because he treated them as though they, too, were creative artists, they took these liberties.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He thought grimly: They can't even tell jokes decently.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And instantly that brought him back to the task in hand. He sat down again. Devil take them all.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He threw the proper Multivac circuit back into operation and said, "The ship's steward stopped at the rail of the ship during a particularly rough ocean crossing and gazed compassionately at the man whose slumped position over the rail and whose intensity of gaze toward the depths betokened all too well the ravages of seasickness.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Gently, the steward patted the man's shoulder. 'Cheer up, sir,' he murmured. 'I know it seems bad, but really, you know, nobody ever dies of seasickness."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The afflicted gentleman lifted his greenish, tortured face to his comforter and gasped in hoarse accents, 'Don't say that, man. For Heaven's sake, don't say that. It's only the hope of dying that's keeping me alive.'"</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Timothy Whistler, a bit preoccupied, nevertheless smiled and nodded as he passed the secretary's desk. She smiled back at him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Here, he thought, was an archaic item in this computer-ridden world of the twenty-first century, a human secretary. But then perhaps it was natural that such an institution should survive here in the very citadel of computerdom; in the gigantic world corporation that handled Multivac. With Multivac filling the horizons, lesser computers for trivial tasks would have been in poor taste.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler stepped into Abram Trask's office. That government official paused in his careful task of lighting a pipe; his dark eyes flicked in Whistler's direction and his beaked nose stood out sharply and prominently against the rectangle of window behind him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Ah, there, Whistler. Sit down. Sit down."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler did so. "I think we've got a problem, Trask."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask half-smiled. "Not a technical one, I hope. I'm just an innocent politician." (It was one of his favorite phrases.)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"It involves Meyerhof."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask sat down instantly and looked acutely miserable. "Are you sure?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Reasonably sure."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler understood the other's sudden unhappiness well. Trask was the government official in charge of the Division of Computers and Automation of the Department of the Interior. He was expected to deal with matters of policy involving the human satellites of Multivac, just as those technically trained satellites were expected to deal with Multivac itself.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>But a Grand Master was more than just a satellite. More, even, than just a human.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Early in the history of Multivac, it had become apparent that the bottleneck was the questioning procedure. Multivac could answer the problem of humanity, _all_ the problems, if--if it were asked meaningful questions. But as knowledge accumulated at an ever-faster rate, it became ever more difficult to locate those meaningful questions.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Reason alone wouldn't do. What was needed was a rare type of intuition; the same faculty of mind (only much more intensified) that made a grand master at chess. A mind was needed of the sort that could see through the quadrillions of chess patterns to find the one best move, and do it in a matter of minutes.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask moved restlessly. "What's Meyerhof been doing?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"He's introduced a line of questioning that I find disturbing."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh, come on, Whistler. Is that all? You can't stop a Grand Master from going through any line of questioning he chooses. Neither you nor I are equipped to judge the worth of his questions. You know that. I know you know that."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I do. Of course. But I also know Meyerhof. Have you ever met him socially?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Good Lord, no. Does anyone meet any Grand Master socially?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Don't take that attitude, Trask. They're human and they're to be pitied. Have you ever thought what it must be like to be a Grand Master; to know there are only some twelve like you in the world; to know that only one or two come up per generation; that the world depends on you; that a thousand mathematicians, logicians, psychologists and physical scientists wait on you?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask shrugged and muttered, "Good Lord, I'd feel king of the world."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I don't think you would," said the senior analyst impatiently. "They feel kings of nothing. They have no equal to talk to, no sensation of belonging. Listen, Meyerhof never misses a chance to get together with the boys. He isn't married, naturally; he doesn't drink; he has no natural social touch-yet he forces himself into company because he must. And do you know what he does when he gets together with us, and that's at least once a week?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I haven't the least idea," said the government man. "This is all new to me."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"He's a jokester."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"He tells jokes. Good ones. He's terrific. He can take any story, however old and dull, and make it sound good. It's the way he tells it. He has a flair."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I see. Well, good."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Or bad. These jokes are important to him." Whistler put both elbows on Trask's desk, bit at a thumbnail and stared into the air. "He's different, he knows he's different and these jokes are the one way he feels he can get the rest of us ordinary schmoes to accept him. We laugh, we howl, we clap him on the back and even forget he's a Grand Master. It's the only hold he has on the rest of us."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"This is all interesting. I didn't know you were such a psychologist. Still, where does this lead?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Just this. What do you suppose happens if Meyerhof runs out of jokes?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What?" The government man stared blankly.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"If he starts repeating himself? If his audience starts laughing less heartily, or stops laughing altogether? It's his only hold on our approval. Without it, he'll be alone and then what would happen to him? After all, Trask, he's one of the dozen men mankind can't do without. We can't let anything happen to him. I don't mean just physical things. We can't even let him get too unhappy. Who knows how that might affect his intuition?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Well, has he started repeating himself?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Not as far as I know, but I think _he_ thinks he has."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Why do you say that?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Because I've heard him telling jokes to Multivac."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh, no."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Accidentally! I walked in on him and he threw me out. He was savage. He's usually good-natured enough, and I consider it a bad sign that he was so upset at the intrusion. But the fact remains that he was telling a joke to Multivac, and I'm convinced it was one of a series."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"But why?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler shrugged and rubbed a hand fiercely across his chin. "I have a thought about that. I think he's trying to build up a store of jokes in Multivac's memory banks in order to get back new variations. You see what I mean? He's planning a mechanical jokester, so that he can have an infinite number of jokes at hand and never fear running out."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Good Lord!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Objectively, there may be nothing wrong with that, but I consider it a bad sign when a Grand Master starts using Multivac for his personal problems. Any Grand Master has a certain inherent mental instability and he should be watched. Meyerhof may be approaching a borderline beyond which we lose a Grand Master."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask said blankly, "What are you suggesting I do?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You can check me. I'm too close to him to judge well, maybe, and judging humans isn't my particular talent, anyway. You're a politician; it's more your talent."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Judging humans, perhaps, not Grand Masters."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"They're human, too. Besides, who else is to do it?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The fingers of Trask's hand struck his desk in rapid succession over and over like a slow and muted roll of drums.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I suppose I'll have to," he said.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof said to Multivac, "The ardent swain, picking a bouquet of wildflowers for his loved one, was disconcerted to find himself, suddenly, in the same field with a large bull of unfriendly appearance which, gazing at him steadily, pawed the ground in a threatening manner. The young man, spying a farmer on the other side of a fairly distant fence, shouted, 'Hey, mister, is that bull safe?' The farmer surveyed the situation with critical eye, spat to one side and called back, 'He's safe as anything.' He spat again, and added, 'Can't say the same about you, though."</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof was about to pass on to the next when the summons came.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It wasn't really a summons. No one could summon a Grand Master. It was only a message that Division Head Trask would like very much to see Grand Master Meyerhof if Grand Master Meyerhof could spare him the time.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof might, with impunity, have tossed the message to one side and continued with whatever he was doing. He was not subject to discipline.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>On the other hand, were he to do that, they would continue to bother him-oh, very respectfully, but they would continue to bother him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>So he neutralized the pertinent circuits of Multivac and locked them into place. He put the freeze signal on his office so that no one would dare enter in his absence and left for Trask's office.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask coughed and felt a bit intimidated by the sullen fierceness of the other's look. He said, "We have not had occasion to know one another, Grand Master, to my great regret."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I have reported to you," said Meyerhof stiffly.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask wondered what lay behind those keen, wild eyes. It was difficult for him to imagine Meyerhof with his thin face, his dark, straight hair, his intense air, even unbending long enough to tell funny stories.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He said, "Reports are not social acquaintance. I-I have been given to understand you have a marvelous fund of anecdotes."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I am a jokester, sir. That's the phrase people use. A jokester."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"They haven't used the phrase to me, Grand Master. They have said--"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The hell with them! I don't care what they've said. See here, Trask, do you want to hear a joke?" He leaned forward across the desk, his eyes narrowed.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"By all means. Certainly," said Trask, with an effort at heartiness.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"All right. Here's the joke: Mrs. Jones stared at the fortune card that had emerged from the weighing machine in response to her husband's penny. She said, 'It says here, George, that you're suave, intelligent, farseeing, industrious and attractive to women.' With that, she turned the card over and added, 'And they have your weight wrong, too.'"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask laughed. It was almost impossible not to. Although the punch line was predictable, the surprising facility with which Meyerhof had produced just the tone of contemptuous disdain in the woman's voice, and the cleverness with which he had contorted the lines of his face to suit that tone carried the politician helplessly into laughter.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof said sharply, "Why is that funny?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask sobered. "I beg your pardon."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I said, why is that funny? Why do you laugh?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Well," said Trask, trying to be reasonable, "the last line put every thing that preceded in a new light. The unexpectedness--"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The point is," said Meyerhof, "that I have pictured a husband being humiliated by his wife; a marriage that is such a failure that the wife is convinced that her husband lacks any virtue. Yet you laugh at that. If you were the husband, would you find it funny?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He waited a moment in thought, then said, "Try this one, Trask: Abner was seated at his wife's sickbed, weeping uncontrollably, when his wife, mustering the dregs of her strength, drew herself up to one elbow.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'Abner,' she whispered, 'Abner, I cannot go to my Maker without confessing my misdeed.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'Not now,' muttered the stricken husband. 'Not now, my dear. Lie back and rest.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'I cannot,' she cried. 'I must tell, or my soul will never know peace. I have been unfaithful to you, Abner. In this very house, not one month ago-'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'Hush, dear,' soothed Abner. 'I know all about it. Why else have I poisoned you?'"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask tried desperately to maintain equanimity but did not entirely succeed. He suppressed a chuckle imperfectly.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof said, "So that's funny, too. Adultery. Murder. All funny."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Well, now," said Trask, "books have been written analyzing humor."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"True enough," said Meyerhof, "and I've read a number of them. What's more, I've read most of them to Multivac. Still, the people who write the books are just guessing. Some of them say we laugh because we feel superior to the people in the joke. Some say it is because of a suddenly realized incongruity, or a sudden relief from tension, or a sudden reinterpretation of events. Is there any simple reason? Different people laugh at different jokes. No joke is universal. Some people don't laugh at any joke. Yet what may be most important is that man is the only animal with a true sense of humor: the only animal that laughs."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask said suddenly, "I understand. You're trying to analyze humor. That's why you're transmitting a series of jokes to Multivac."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Who told you I was doing that?... Never mind, it was Whistler. I remember, now. He surprised me at it. Well, what about it?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Nothing at all."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You don't dispute my right to add anything I wish to Multivac's general fund of knowledge, or to ask any question I wish?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"No, not at all," said Trask hastily. "As a matter of fact, I have no doubt that this will open the way to new analyses of great interest to psychologists."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Hmp. Maybe. Just the same there's something plaguing me that's more important than just the general analysis of humor. There's a specific question I have to ask. Two of them, really."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh? What's that?" Trask wondered if the other would answer. There would be no way of compelling him if he chose not to.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>But Meyerhof said, "The first question is this: Where do all these jokes come from?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Who makes them up? Listen! About a month ago, I spent an evening swapping jokes. As usual, I told most of them and, as usual, the fools laughed. Maybe they really thought the jokes were funny and maybe they were just humoring me. In any case, one creature took the liberty of slapping me on the back and saying, 'Meyerhof, you know more jokes than any ten people I know."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I'm sure he was right, but it gave rise to a thought. I don't know how many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of jokes I've told at one time or another in my life, yet the fact is I never made up one. Not one. I'd only repeated them. My only contribution was to tell them. To begin with, I'd either heard them or read them. And the source of my hearing or reading didn't make up the jokes, either. I never met anyone who ever claimed to have constructed a joke. It's always 'I heard a good one the other day,' and 'Heard any good ones lately?'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>_"All the jokes are old_! That's why jokes exhibit such a social lag. They still deal with seasickness, for instance, when that's easily prevented these days and never experienced. Or they'll deal with fortune-giving weighing machines, like the joke I told you, when such machines are found only in antique shops. Well, then, who makes up the jokes?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask said, "Is that what you're trying to find out?" It was on the tip of Trask's tongue to add: Good Lord, who cares? He forced that impulse down. A Grand Master's questions were always meaningful.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Of course that's what I'm trying to find out. Think of it this way. It's not just that jokes happen to be old. They must be old to be enjoyed. It's essential that a joke not be original. There's one variety of humor that is, or can be, original and that's the pun. I've heard puns that were obviously made up on the spur of the moment. I have made some up myself. But no one laughs at such puns. You're not supposed to. You groan. The better the pun, the louder the groan. Original humor is not laugh-provoking. Why?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I'm sure I don't know."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"All right. Let's find out. Having given Multivac all the information I thought advisable on the general topic of humor, I am now feeding it selected jokes."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask found himself intrigued. "Selected how?" he asked.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I don't know," said Meyerhof. "They felt like the right ones. I'm Grand Master, you know."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh, agreed. Agreed."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"From those jokes and the general philosophy of humor, my first request will be for Multivac to trace the origin of the jokes, if it can. Since Whistler is in on this and since he has seen fit to report it to you, have him down in Analysis day after tomorrow. I think he'll have a bit of work to do."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Certainly. May I attend, too?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof shrugged. Trask's attendance was obviously a matter of indifference to him.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof had selected the last in the series with particular care. What that care consisted of, he could not have said, but he had revolved a dozen possibilities in his mind, and over and over again had tested each for some indefinable quality of meaningfulness.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He said, "Ug, the caveman, observed his mate running to him in tears, her leopard-skin skirt in disorder. 'Ug,' she cried, distraught, 'do something quickly. A saber-toothed tiger has entered Mother's cave. Do something!' Ug grunted, picked up his well-gnawed buffalo bone and said, 'Why do anything? Who the hell cares what happens to a saber-toothed tiger?'"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It was then that Meyerhof asked his two questions and leaned back, closing his eyes. He was done.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I saw absolutely nothing wrong," said Trask to Whistler. "He told me what he was doing readily enough and it was odd but legitimate."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What he _claimed_ he was doing," said Whistler.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Even so, I can't stop a Grand Master on opinion alone. He seemed queer but, after all, Grand Masters are supposed to seem queer. I didn't think him insane."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Using Multivac to find the source of jokes?" muttered the senior analyst in discontent. "That's not insane?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How can we tell?" asked Trask irritably. "Science has advanced to the point where the only meaningful questions left are the ridiculous ones. The sensible ones have been thought of, asked and answered long ago."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"It's no use. I'm bothered."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Maybe, but there's no choice now, Whistler. We'll see Meyerhof and you can do the necessary analysis of Multivac's response, if any. As for me, my only job is to handle the red tape. Good Lord, I don't even know what a senior analyst such as yourself is supposed to do, except analyze, and that doesn't help me any."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler said, "It's simple enough. A Grand Master like Meyerhof asks questions and Multivac automatically formulates it into quantities and operations. The necessary machinery for converting words to symbols is what makes up most of the bulk of Multivac. Multivac then gives the answer in quantities and operations, but it doesn't translate that back into words except in the most simple and routine cases. If it were designed to solve the general retranslation problem, its bulk would have to be quadrupled at least."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I see. Then it's your job to translate these symbols into words?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"My job and that of other analysts. We use smaller, specially designed computers whenever necessary." Whistler smiled grimly. "Like the Delphic priestess of ancient Greece, Multivac gives oracular and obscure answers. Only we have translators, you see."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>They had arrived. Meyerhof was waiting.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler said briskly, "What circuits did you use, Grand Master?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof told him and Whistler went to work.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask tried to follow what was happening, but none of it made sense. The government official watched a spool unreel with a pattern of dots in endless incomprehensibility. Grand Master Meyerhof stood indifferently to one side while Whistler surveyed the pattern as it emerged. The analyst had put on headphones and a mouthpiece and at intervals murmured a series of instructions which, at some far-off place, guided assistants through electronic contortions in other computers.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Occasionally, Whistler listened, then punched combinations on a complex keyboard marked with symbols that looked vaguely mathematical but weren't.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A good deal more than an hour's time elapsed.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The frown on Whistler's face grew deeper. Once, he looked up at the two others and began, "This is unbel--" and turned back to his work.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Finally, he said hoarsely, "I can give you an unofficial answer." His eyes were red-rimmed. "The official answer awaits complete analysis. Do you want it unofficial?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Go ahead," said Meyerhof.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask nodded.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler darted a hangdog glance at the Grand Master. "Ask a foolish question--" he said. Then, gruffly, "Multivac says, extraterrestrial origin."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What are you saying?" demanded Trask.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Don't you hear me? The jokes we laugh at were not made up by any man. Multivac has analyzed all data given it and the one answer that best fits that data is that some extraterrestrial intelligence has composed the jokes, all of them, and placed them in selected human minds at selected times and places in such a way that no man is conscious of having made one up. All subsequent jokes are minor variations and adaptations of these grand originals."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof broke in, face flushed with the kind of triumph only a Grand Master can know who once again has asked the right question. "All comedy writers," he said, "work by twisting old jokes to new purposes. That's well known. The answer fits."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"But why?" asked Trask. "Why make up the jokes?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Multivac says," said Whistler, "that the only purpose that fits all the data is that the jokes are intended to study human psychology. We study rat psychology by making the rats solve mazes. The rats don't know why and wouldn't even if they were aware of what was going on, which they're not. These outer intelligences study man's psychology by noting individual reactions to carefully selected anecdotes. Each man reacts differently.... Presumably, these outer intelligences are to us as we are to rats." He shuddered.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask, eyes staring, said, "The Grand Master said man is the only animal with a sense of humor. It would seem then that the sense of humor is foisted upon us from without."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof added excitedly, "And for possible humor created from within, we have no laughter. Puns, I mean."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler said, "Presumably, the extraterrestrials cancel out reactions to spontaneous jokes to avoid confusion."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask said in sudden agony of spirit, "Come on, now, Good Lord, do either of you believe this?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The senior analyst looked at him coldly. "Multivac says so. It's all that can be said so far. It has pointed out the real jokesters of the universe, and if we want to know more, the matter will have to be followed up." He added in a whisper, "If anyone dares follow it up."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Grand Master Meyerhof said suddenly, "I asked two questions, you know. So far only the first has been answered. I think Multivac has enough data to answer the second."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler shrugged. He seemed a half-broken man. "When a Grand Master thinks there is enough data," he said, "I'll make book on it. What is your second question?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I asked this. What will be the effect on the human race of discovering the answer to my first question?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Why did you ask that?" demanded Trask.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Just a feeling that it had to be asked," said Meyerhof.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask said, "Insane. It's all insane," and turned away. Even he himself felt how strangely he and Whistler had changed sides. Now it was Trask crying insanity.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Trask closed his eyes. He might cry insanity all he wished, but no man in fifty years had doubted the combination of a Grand Master and Multivac and found his doubts verified.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler worked silently, teeth clenched. He put Multivac and its subsidiary machines through their paces again. Another hour passed and he laughed harshly. "A raving nightmare!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What's the answer?" asked Meyerhof. "I want Multivac's remarks, not yours."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"All right. Take it. Multivac states that, once even a single human discovers the truth of this method of psychological analysis of the human mind, it will become useless as an objective technique to those extraterrestrial powers now using it."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You mean there won't be any more jokes handed out to humanity?" asked Trask faintly. "Or what do you mean?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"No more jokes," said Whistler, "_now_! Multivac says _now_! The experiment is ended _now_! A new technique will have to be introduced."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>They stared at each other. The minutes passed.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Meyerhof said slowly, "Multivac is right."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whistler said haggardly, "I know."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Even Trask said in a whisper, "Yes. It must be."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It was Meyerhof who put his finger on the proof of it, Meyerhof the accomplished jokester. He said, "It's over, you know, all over. I've been trying for five minutes now and I can't think of one single joke, not one! And if I read one in a book, I wouldn't laugh. I know."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The gift of humor is gone," said Trask drearily. "No man will ever laugh again."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And they remained there, staring, feeling the world shrink down to the dimensions of an experimental rat cage-with the maze removed and something, something about to be put in its place.</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-82062282536435310632009-06-29T06:38:00.000-07:002009-06-29T06:40:55.574-07:00The Journey to the East<div><b><i>by Hermann Hesse</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> It was my destiny to join in a great experience. Having had the good fortune to belong to the League, I was permitted to be a participant in a unique journey. What wonder it had at the time! How radiant and comet-like it seemed, and how quickly it has been forgotten and allowed to fall into disrepute. For this reason, I have decided to attempt a short description of this fabulous journey, a journey the like of which had not been attempted since the days of Hugo and mad Roland. Ours have been remarkable times, this period since the World War, troubled and confused, yet, despite this, fertile. I do not think that I am under any illusion about the difficulties of my attempt; they are very great and are not only of a subjective nature, although these alone would be considerable. For not only do I no longer possess the tokens, mementos, documents and diaries relating to the journey, but in the difficult years of misfortune, sickness and deep affliction which have elapsed since then, a large number of my recollections have also vanished. As a result of the buffets of Fate and because of the continual discouragement, my memory as well as my confidence in these earlier vivid recollections have become impaired. But apart from these purely personal notes, I am handicapped because of my former vow to the League; for although this vow permits unrestricted communication of my personal experiences, it forbids any disclosures about the League itself. And even though the League seems to have had no visible existence for a long time and I have not seen any of its members again, no allurement or threat in the world would induce me to break my vow. On the contrary, if today or tomorrow I had to appear before a court-martial and was given the option of dying or divulging the secret of the League, I would joyously seal my vow to the League with death.</div><div> It can be noted here that since the travel diary of Count Keyserling, several books have appeared in which the authors, partly unconsciously, but also partly deliberately, have given the impression that they are brothers of the League and had taken part in the Journey to the East. Incidentally, even the adventurous travel accounts of Ossendowski come under this justifiable suspicion. But they all have nothing to do with the League and our Journey to the East, or at any rate, no more than ministers of a small sanctimonious sect have to do with the Saviour, the Apostles and the Holy Ghost to whom they refer for special favor and membership. Even if Count Keyserling really sailed round the world with ease, and if Ossendowski actually traversed the countries he described, yet their journeys were not remarkable and they discovered no new territory, whereas at certain stages of our Journey to the East, although the commonplace aids of modern travel such as railways, steamers, telegraph, automobiles, airplanes, etc., were renounced, we penetrated into the heroic and magical. It was shortly after the World War, and the beliefs of the conquered nations were in an extraordinary state of unreality. There was a readiness to believe in things beyond reality even though only a few barriers were actually overcome and few advances made into the realm of a future psychiatry. Our journey at that time across the Moon Ocean to Famagusta under the leadership of Albert the Great, or say, the discovery of the Butterfly Island, twelve leagues beyond Zipangu, or the inspiring League ceremony at Rudiger's grave-those were deeds and experiences which were allotted once only to people of our time and zone.</div><div> I see that I am already coming up against one of the greatest obstacles in my account. The heights to which our deeds rose, the spiritual plane of experience to which they belong might be made proportionately more comprehensible to the reader if I were permitted to disclose to him the essence of the League's secret. But a great deal, perhaps everything, will remain incredible and incomprehensible. One paradox, however, must be accepted and this is that it is necessary to continually attempt the seemingly impossible. I agree with Siddhartha, our wise friend from the East, who once said: "Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another." Even centuries ago the members and historians of our League recognized and courageously faced up to this difficulty. One of the greatest of them gave expression to it in an immortal verse:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> "He who travels far will often see things</div><div> Far removed from what he believed was Truth.</div><div> When he talks about it in the fields at home,</div><div> He is often accused of lying,</div><div> For the obdurate people will not believe</div><div> What they do not see and distinctly feel.</div><div> Inexperience, I believe,</div><div> Will give little credence to my song."</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> This inexperience has also created the position where, now that publicity is being given to our journey which once roused thousands to ecstasy, it is not only forgotten but a real taboo is imposed upon its recollection. History is rich in examples of a similar kind. The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and senseless desire-the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important? Have we not just had the experience that a long, horrible, monstrous war has been forgotten, gainsaid, distorted and dismissed by all nations? And now that they have had a short respite, are not the same nations trying to recall by means of exciting war novels what they themselves caused and endured a few years ago? In the same way, the day of rediscovery will come for the deeds and sorrows of our League, which are now either forgotten or are a laughingstock in the world, and my notes should make a small contribution towards it.</div><div> One of the characteristics of the Journey to the East was that although the League aimed at quite definite, very lofty goals during this journey (they belong to the secret category and are therefore not communicable), yet every single participant could have his own private goals. Indeed, he had to have them; for no one was included who did not have such private goals, and every single one of us, while appearing to share common ideals and goals and to fight under a common flag, carried his own fond childhood dream within his heart as a source of inner strength and comfort. My own goal for the journey, about which the President questioned me before my acceptance into the League, was a simple one, but many members of the League had set themselves goals which, although I respected, I could not fully understand. For example, one of them was a treasure-seeker and he thought of nothing else but of winning a great treasure which he called "Tao." Still another had conceived the idea of capturing a certain snake to which he attributed magical powers and which he called Kundalini. My own journey and life-goal, which had colored my dreams since my late boyhood, was to see the beautiful Princess Fatima and, if possible, to win her love.</div><div> At the time that I had the good fortune to join the League-that is, immediately after the end of the World War-our country was full of saviors, prophets, and disciples, of presentiments about the end of the world, or hopes for the dawn of a Third Empire. Shattered by the war, in despair as a result of deprivation and hunger, greatly disillusioned by the seeming futility of all the sacrifices in blood and goods, our people at that time were lured by many phantoms, but there were also many real spiritual advances. There were Bacchanalian dance societies and Anabaptist groups, there was one thing after another that seemed to point to what was wonderful and beyond the veil. There was also at that time a widespread leaning towards Indian, ancient Persian and other Eastern mysteries and religions, and all this gave most people the impression that our ancient League was one of the many newly-blossomed cults, and that after a few years it would also be partly forgotten, despised and decried. The faithful amongst its disciples cannot dispute this.</div><div> How well do I remember the hour when, after the expiration of my probation year, I presented myself before the High Throne. I was given insight to the project of the Journey to the East, and after I had dedicated myself, body and soul, to this project, I was asked in a friendly way what I personally hoped to gain from this journey into the legendary realm. Although blushing somewhat, I confessed frankly and unhesitatingly to the assembled officials that it was my heart's desire to be allowed to see Princess Fatima. The Speaker, interpreting the allusion, gently placed his hand on my head and uttered the formula which confirmed my admission as a member of the League. "Anima pia," he said and bade me be constant in faith, courageous in danger, and to love my fellow-men. Well-schooled during my year's probation, I took the oath, renounced the world and its superstitions and had the League ring placed on my finger to the words from one of the most beautiful chapters in our League's history:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> "On earth and in the air, in water and in fire,</div><div> The spirits are subservient to him,</div><div> His glance frightens and tames the wildest beasts,</div><div> And even the anti-Christian must approach him with awe. . .etc."</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> To my great pleasure, immediately on admission to the League, we novitiates were given insight to our prospects. For instance, on following the directions of the officials to attach myself to one of the groups of ten people who were en route throughout the country to join the League's expedition, one of the League's secrets immediately became vividly clear to me. I realized that I had joined a pilgrimage to the East, seemingly a definite and single pilgrimage-but in reality, in its broadest sense, this expedition to the East was not only mine and now; this procession of believers and disciples had always and incessantly been moving towards the East, towards the Home of Light. Throughout the centuries it had been on the way, towards light and wonder, and each member, each group, indeed our whole host and its great pilgrimage, was only a wave in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal strivings of the human spirit towards the East, towards Home. The knowledge passed through my mind like a ray of light and immediately reminded me of a phrase which I had learned during my novitiate year, which had always pleased me immensely without my realizing its full significance. It was a phrase by the poet Novalis, "Where are we really going? Always home!"</div><div> Meantime, our group had set off on its travels; soon we encountered other groups, and the feeling of unity and a common goal gave us increasing happiness. Faithful to our instructions, we lived like pilgrims and made no use of those contrivances which spring into existence in a world deluded by money, number and time, and which drain life of its content; mechanical contrivances such as railways, watches and the like came chiefly into this category. Another unanimously observed rule bade us visit and pay homage to all places and associations relating to the ancient history of our League and its faith. We visited and honored all sacred places and monuments, churches and consecrated tombstones which we came across on our way; chapels and altars were adorned with flowers; ruins were honored with songs or silent contemplation; the dead were commemorated with music and prayers. It was not unusual for us to be mocked at and disturbed by unbelievers, but it also happened often enough that priests blessed us and invited us to be their guests, that children enthusiastically joined us, learned our songs and saw us depart with tears in their eyes; that an old man would show us forgotten monuments or tell us a legend about his district; that youths would walk with us part of the way and desire to join the League. The latter were given advice and apprised of the first rites and practices of novitiates. We were aware of the first wonders, partly through seeing them with our own eyes and partly through unexpected accounts and legends. One day, when I was still quite a new member, someone suddenly mentioned that the giant Agramant was a guest in our leaders' tent, and was trying to persuade them to make their way across Africa in order to liberate some League members from Moorish captivity. Another time we saw the Goblin, the pitch-maker, the comforter, and we presumed that we should make our way towards the Blue Pot. However, the first amazing phenomenon which I saw with my own eyes was when we had stopped for prayer and rest at an old half-ruined Chapel in the region of Spaichendorf; on the only undamaged wall of the Chapel there was painted a very large picture of Saint Christopher, and on his shoulder, small, and half-faded from old age, sat the Child Saviour. The leaders, as was sometimes their custom, did not simply propose the direction we should take, but invited us all to give our opinion, for the Chapel lay at a three-direction signpost and we had the choice. Only a few of us expressed a wish or gave advice, but one person pointed to the left and urgently requested that we should choose this path. We were all silent then and waited for our leaders' decision, when Saint Christopher raised his arm holding the long, thick staff and pointed to the left where our brother desired to go. We all watched this in silence, and silently the leaders turned to the left and went along this path, and we all followed with the utmost pleasure.</div><div> We had not been long on our way in Swabia when a power which we had not thought about became noticeable. We had felt its influence strongly for a rather long time without quite knowing whether it was friendly or hostile. It was the power of the guardians of the crown who, since olden times, had preserved the memory and inheritance of the Hohenstaufen in that country. I do not know whether our leaders knew more about it and had any instructions regarding it. I only know that we received many exhortations and warnings from them, such as on the hill on the way to Bopfingen where we met a hoary old warrior; he shook his grey head with his eyes closed and disappeared again without leaving any trace. Our leaders took notice of the warning; we turned back and did not go to Bopfingen. On the other hand, it happened in the neighborhood of Urach that an ambassador of the crown guardians appeared in our leaders' tent as if sprung from out of the ground, and with promises and threats tried to induce them to put our expedition at the service of the Staufen, and indeed to make preparations for the conquest of Sicily. When the leaders firmly refused this demand, he said he would put a dreadful curse on the League and on our expedition. And yet I am only reporting what was whispered among ourselves; the leaders themselves did not mention a word about it. Still, it seems possible that it was our uncertain relationship with the guardians of the crown which, for a long time, gave our League the unmerited reputation of being a secret society for the restoration of the monarchy.</div><div> On one occasion I also had the experience of seeing one of my comrades entertain doubts; he renounced his vow and relapsed into disbelief. He was a young man whom I had liked very much. His personal reason for joining the expedition to the East was his desire to see the coffin of the prophet Mohammed from which, it had been said, he could by magic rise freely into the air. In one of those Swabian or Alemannic small towns where we stopped for a few days, because an opposition of Saturn and the moon checked our progress, this unfortunate man, who had seemed sad and restless for some time, met one of his former teachers to whom he had remained very attached since his schooldays. This teacher was successful in again making the young man see our cause in the light which it appears to unbelievers. After one of these visits to the teacher, the poor man came back to our camp in a dreadful state of excitement and with a distorted countenance. He made a commotion outside the leaders' tent, and when the Speaker came out he shouted at him angrily that he had had enough of this ridiculous expedition which would never bring us to the East; he had had enough of the journey being interrupted for days because of stupid astrological considerations; he was more than tired of idleness, of childish wanderings, of floral ceremonies, of attaching importance to magic, of the intermingling of life and poetry; he would throw the ring at the leaders' feet, take his leave and return by the trusty railway to his home and his useful work. It was an ugly and lamentable sight. We were filled with shame and yet at the same time pitied the misguided man. The Speaker listened to him kindly, stooped with a smile for the discarded ring, and said in a quiet, cheerful voice which must have put the blustering man to shame: "You have said good-bye to us and want to return to the railway, to common-sense and useful work. You have said good-bye to the League, to the expedition to the East, good-bye to magic, to floral festivals, to poetry. You are absolved from your vow."</div><div> "Also from the vow of silence?" cried the deserter.</div><div> "Yes, also from the vow of silence," answered the Speaker. "Remember, you vowed to keep silent about the secret of the League to unbelievers. As we see you have forgotten the secret, you will not be able to pass it on to anyone."</div><div> "I have forgotten something! I have forgotten nothing," cried the young man, but became uncertain, and as the Speaker turned his back on him and withdrew to the tent, he suddenly ran quickly away.</div><div> We were sorry, but the days were crammed so full with events that I quickly forgot him. But it happened some time later, when none of us thought about him any more, that we heard the inhabitants of several villages and towns through which we passed, talk about this same youth. A young man had been there (and they described him accurately and mentioned his name) who had been looking for us everywhere. First he had said that he belonged to us, had stayed behind on the journey and had lost his way. Then he began to weep and stated that he had been unfaithful to us and had run away, but now he realized that he could no longer live outside the League; he wished to, and indeed must, find us in order to go down on his knees before our leaders and beg to be forgiven. We heard this tale told again here, there, and everywhere; wherever we went, the wretched man had just been there. We asked the Speaker what he thought about it and what would be the outcome. "I do not think that he will find us," said the Speaker briefly. And he did not find us. We did not see him again.</div><div> Once, when one of the leaders had drawn me into a confidential conversation, I gathered courage and asked him how things stood with this renegade brother. After all, he was penitent and was looking for us, I said; we ought to help him redeem his error. No doubt, he would in the future be the most loyal member of the League. The leader said: "We should be happy if he did find his way back to us, but we cannot aid him. He has made it very difficult for himself to have faith again. I fear that he would not see and recognize us even if we passed close by him; he has become blind. Repentance alone does not help. Grace cannot be bought with repentance; it cannot be bought at all. A similar thing has already happened to many other people; great and famous men have shared the same fate as this young man. Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again. Some of them have spent the rest of their lives looking for us again, but could not find us. They have then told the world that our League is only a pretty legend and people should not be misled by it. Others have become our deadly enemies and have abused and harmed the League in every possible way."</div><div> There were wonderful festive days each time we encountered other parties of the League's hosts on our way; sometimes we then formed a camp of hundreds, even thousands. The expedition did not, in fact, proceed in any fixed order with participants moving in the same direction in more or less closed columns. On the contrary, numerous groups were simultaneously on the way, each following their own leaders and their own stars, each one always ready to merge into a greater unit and belong to it for a time, but always no less ready to move on again separately. Some went on their way quite alone. I also walked alone at times, whenever some sign or call tempted me to go my own way.</div><div> I remember a select little group with which we traveled and camped together for some days; this group had undertaken to liberate some captive League brothers and the Princess Isabella from the hands of the Moors. It was said that they were in possession of Hugo's horn, and among them were my friends the poet Lauscher and the artists Klingsor and Paul Klee; they spoke of nothing else but Africa and the captured princess, and their Bible was the book of the deeds of Don Quixote, in whose honor they thought of making their way across Spain.</div><div> It was very pleasant whenever we met one of these groups, to attend their feasts and devotions and to invite them to ours, to hear about their deeds and plans, to bless and know them on parting; they went their way, we went ours. Each one of them had his own dream, his wish, his secret heart's desire, and yet they all flowed together in the great stream and all belonged to each other, shared the same reverence and the same faith, and had made the same vow! I met Jup, the magician, who proposed to gather the fortune of his life in Kashmir; I met Collofine, the sorcerer, quoting his favorite passage from the Adventures of Simplicissimus; I met Louis the Terrible, who dreamt of planting an olive-grove in the Holy Land and keeping slaves. He went arm-in-arm with Anselm, who was in search of the purple iris of his childhood. I met and loved Ninon, known as "the foreigner." Dark eyes gleamed beneath her black hair. She was jealous of Fatima, the princess of my dreams, and yet she was probably Fatima herself without my knowing it. And as we moved on, so had once pilgrims, emperors and crusaders moved on to liberate the Saviour's grave, or to study Arabian magic; Spanish knights had traveled this way, as well as German scholars, Irish monks and French poets.</div><div> I, whose calling was really only that of a violinist and story-teller, was responsible for the provision of music for our group, and I then discovered how a long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength. I did not only play the violin and conduct our choirs, but also collected old songs and chorals. I wrote motets and madrigals for six and eight voices and practised them. But I will not give you details of these.</div><div> I was very fond of many of my comrades and leaders, but not one of them subsequently occupied my thoughts as much as Leo, while at that time he was apparently hardly noticed. Leo was one of our servants (who were naturally volunteers, as we were). He helped to carry the luggage and was often assigned to the personal service of the Speaker. This unaffected man had something so pleasing, so unobtrusively winning about him that everyone loved him. He did his work gaily, usually sang or whistled as he went along, was never seen except when needed-in fact, an ideal servant. Furthermore, all animals were attached to him. We nearly always had some dog or other with us which joined us on account of Leo; he could tame birds and attract butterflies to him. It was his desire for Solomon's key which would enable him to understand the language of the birds that had drawn him to the East. This servant Leo worked in a very simple and natural manner, friendly in an unassuming way, alongside the many forms of our League, which, without doing harm to the value and sincerity of the League, had within them something exalting, something singular, solemn, or fantastic. What makes my account particularly difficult is the great disparity in my individual recollections. I have already said that sometimes we marched along only as a small group; sometimes we formed a troop or even an army, but sometimes I remained in a district with only a few friends, or even quite alone, without tents, without leaders and without a Speaker. My tale becomes even more difficult because we not only wandered through Space, but also through Time. We moved towards the East, but we also traveled into the Middle Ages and the Golden Age; we roamed through Italy or Switzerland, but at times we also spent the night in the 10th century and dwelt with the patriarchs or the fairies. During the times I remained alone, I often found again places and people of my own past. I wandered with my former betrothed along the edges of the forest of the Upper Rhine, caroused with friends of my youth in Tübingen, in Basle or in Florence, or I was a boy and went with my school-friends to catch butterflies or to watch an otter, or my company consisted of the beloved characters of my books; Almansor and Parsifal, Witiko or Goldmund rode by my side, or Sancho Panza, or we were guests at the Barmekides. When I found my way back to our group in some valley or other, heard the League's songs and camped by the leaders' tents, it was immediately clear to me that my excursion into my childhood and my ride with Sancho belonged essentially to this journey. For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times. Yet I was only aware of this for a moment, and therein lay the reason for my great happiness at that time. Later, when I had lost this happiness again, I clearly understood these connections without deriving the slightest benefit or comfort from them. When something precious and irretrievable is lost, we have the feeling of having awakened from a dream. In my case this feeling is strangely correct, for my happiness did indeed arise from the same secret as the happiness in dreams; it arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously, to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theatre. And as we League brothers traveled throughout the world without motor-cars or ships, as we conquered the war-shattered world by our faith and transformed it into Paradise, we creatively brought the past, the future and the fictitious into the present moment.</div><div> And again and again, in Swabia, at Bodensee, in Switzerland, everywhere, we met people who understood us, or were in some way thankful that we and our League and our Journey to the East existed. Amid the tramways and banks of Zürich we came across Noah's Ark guarded by several old dogs which all had the same name, and which were bravely guided across the shallow waters of a calm period by Hans C. to Noah's descendant, to the friend of the arts. We went to Winterthur, down into Stocklin's Magic Closet; we were guests in the Chinese Temple where the incense holders gleamed beneath the bronze Maja and the black king played the flute sweetly to the vibrating tone of the temple gong. And at the foot of the Sun Mountains we came across Suon Mali, a colony of the King of Siam, where, amongst the stone and brazen Buddhas, we offered up our libations and incense as grateful guests.</div><div> One of the most beautiful experiences was the League's celebration in Bremgarten; the magic circle surrounded us closely there. Received by Max and Tilli, the lords of the castle, we heard Othmar play Mozart on the grand-piano in the lofty hall. We found the grounds occupied by parrots and other talking birds. We heard the fairy Armida sing at the fountain. With blown locks the heavy head of the astrologer Longus nodded by the side of the beloved countenance of Henry of Ofterdingen. In the garden, the peacocks screeched, and Louis conversed in Spanish with Puss in Boots, while Hans Resom, shaken after his peeps into the masked game of life, vowed he would go on a pilgrimage to the grave of Charles the Great. It was one of the triumphant periods of our journey; we had brought the magic wave with us; it cleansed everything. The native paid homage on his knees to beauty, the lord of the castle produced a poem which dealt with our evening activities. The animals from the forest lurked close to the castle walls, and in the river the gleaming fishes moved in lively swarms and were fed with cakes and wine.</div><div> The best of these experiences really worth relating are those which reflect the spirit of it. My description of them seems poor and perhaps foolish, but everyone who participated in and celebrated the days at Bremgarten would confirm every single detail and supplement them with hundreds which are more beautiful. I shall always remember how the peacocks' tails shimmered when the moon rose amongst the tall trees, and on the shady bank the emerging mermaids gleamed fresh and silvery amongst the rocks; how Don Quixote stood alone under the chestnut-tree by the fountain and held his first night-watch while the last Roman candles of the firework display fell so softly over the castle's turrets in the moonlight, and my colleague Pablo, adorned with roses, played the Persian reed-pipe to the girls. Oh, which of us ever thought that the magic circle would break so soon! That almost all of us-and also I, even I-should again lose myself in the soundless deserts of mapped out reality, just like officials and shop-assistants who, after a party or a Sunday outing, adapt themselves again to everyday business life!</div><div> In those days none of us was capable of such thoughts. From the castle's turrets of Bremgarten, the fragrance of lilac entered my bedroom. I heard the river flowing beyond the trees. I climbed out of the window in the depth of the night, intoxicated with happiness and yearning. I stole past the knight on guard and the sleeping banqueters down to the river-bank, to the flowing waters, to the white, gleaming mermaids. They took me down with them into the cool, moonlit crystal world of their home, where they played dreamily with the crowns and golden chains from their treasure-chambers. It seemed to me that I spent months in the sparkling depths and when I emerged and swam ashore, thoroughly chilled, Pablo's reed-pipe was still to be heard from the garden far away, and the moon was still high in the sky. I saw Leo playing with two white poodles, his clever, boyish face radiating happiness. I found Longus sitting in the wood. On his knees was a book of parchment in which he was writing Greek and Hebrew characters; dragons flew out of the letters, and colored snakes reared themselves. He did not look at me; he went on painting, absorbed in his colored snake-writing. For a long time I looked over his bent shoulders into the book. I saw the snakes and dragons emerge from his writing, whirl about and silently disappear into the dark wood. "Longus," I said to him softly, "dear friend!" He did not hear me, my world was far from his. And quite apart, under the moonlit trees, Anselm wandered about with an iris in his hand; lost in thought, he stared and smiled at the flower's purple calyx.</div><div> Something that I had observed several times during our journey, without having fully considered it, impressed me again during the days at Bremgarten, strangely and rather painfully. There were amongst us many artists, painters, musicians and poets. Ardent Klingsor was there and restless Hugo Wolf, taciturn Lauscher and vivacious Brentano-but however animated and lovable the personalities of these artists were, yet without exception their imaginary characters were more animated, more beautiful, happier and certainly finer and more real than the poets and creators themselves. Pablo sat there with his flute in enchanting innocence and joy, but his poet slipped away like a shadow to the river-bank, half-transparent in the moonlight, seeking solitude. Stumbling and rather drunk, Hoffman ran here and there amongst the guests, talking a great deal, small and elfish, and he also, like all of them, was only half-real, only half there, not quite solid, not quite real. At the same time, the archivist Lindhorst, playing at dragons for a joke, continually breathed fire and discharged energy like an automobile. I asked the servant Leo why it was that artists sometimes appeared to be only half-alive, while their creations seemed so irrefutably alive. Leo looked at me, surprised at my question. Then he released the poodle he was holding in his arms and said: "It is just the same with mothers. When they have borne their children and given them their milk and beauty and strength, they themselves become invisible, and no one asks about them any more."</div><div> "But that is sad," I said, without really thinking very much about it.</div><div> "I do not think it is sadder than all other things," said Leo. "Perhaps it is sad and yet also beautiful. The law ordains that it shall be so."</div><div> "The law?" I asked curiously. "What law is that, Leo?"</div><div> "The law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long."</div><div> "Then why do so many strive to rule?"</div><div> "Because they do not understand. There are few who are born to be masters; they remain happy and healthy. But all the others who have only become masters through endeavor, end in nothing."</div><div> "In what nothing, Leo?"</div><div> "For example, in the sanitoria."</div><div> I understood little about it and yet the words remained in my memory and left me with a feeling that this Leo knew all kinds of things, that he perhaps knew more than us, who were ostensibly his masters.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> II</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> Each participant in this unforgettable journey had his own ideas as to what made our faithful Leo suddenly decide to leave us in the middle of the dangerous gorge of Morbio Inferiore. It was only very much later that I began in some measure to suspect and review the circumstances and deeper significance of this occurrence. It also seemed that this apparently incidental but in reality extremely important event, the disappearance of Leo, was in no way an accident, but a link in that chain of events through which the eternal enemy sought to bring disaster to our undertaking. On that cool autumn morning when it was discovered that our servant Leo was missing and that all search for him remained fruitless, I was certainly not the only one who, for the first time, had a feeling of impending disaster and menacing destiny.</div><div> However, for the moment, this was the position. After we had boldly crossed half Europe and a portion of the Middle Ages, we camped in a very narrow rocky valley, a wild mountain gorge on the Italian border, and looked for the inexplicably missing Leo. The longer we looked for him and the more our hopes of finding him again dwindled during the course of the day, the more were we oppressed by the thought that it was not only the question of a popular, pleasant man amongst our servants who had either met with an accident or run away or had been captured by an enemy, but that this was the beginning of trouble, the first indication of a storm which would break over us. We spent the whole of the day, far into the twilight, searching for Leo. The whole of the gorge was explored, and while these exertions made us weary, and a feeling of hopelessness and futility grew amongst us all, it was very strange and uncanny how from hour to hour the missing servant seemed to increase in importance and our loss created difficulties. It was not only that each pilgrim, and without doubt the whole of the staff, were worried about the handsome, pleasant and willing youth, but it seemed that the more certain his loss became, the more indispensable he seemed; without Leo, his handsome face, his good humor and his songs, without his enthusiasm for our great undertaking, the undertaking itself seemed in some mysterious way to lose meaning. At least, that is how it affected me. Despite all the strain and many minor disillusionments during the previous months of the journey, I had never had a moment of inner weakness, of serious doubt; no successful general, no bird in the swallows' flight to Egypt, could be more sure of his goal, of his mission, of the rightness of his actions and aspirations than I was on this journey. But now, in this fateful place, while I continually heard the calls and signals of our sentinels during the whole of the blue and golden October day, and awaited again and again with growing excitement the arrival of a report, only to suffer disappointment and to gaze at perplexed faces, I had feelings of sadness and doubt for the first time. The stronger these feelings became, the clearer it seemed to me that it was not only that I had lost faith in finding Leo again, but everything now seemed to become unreliable and doubtful; the value and meaning of everything was threatened: our comradeship, our faith, our vow, our Journey to the East, our whole life.</div><div> Even if I was mistaken in presuming that we all had these feelings, indeed even if I was subsequently mistaken about my own feelings and inner experiences and many things which were in reality experienced much later and erroniously attributed to that day, there still remains, despite everything, the strange fact about Leo's luggage. Quite apart from all personal moods, this was, in fact, rather strange, fantastic, and an increasing source of worry. Even during this day in the Morbio gorge, even during our eager search for the missing man, first one man, then another missed something important, something indispensable from the luggage which could not be found anywhere. It appeared that every missing article must have been in Leo's luggage, and although Leo, like all the rest of us, had only carried the usual linen haversack on his back, just one bag amongst about thirty others, it seemed that in this one lost bag there were all the really important things which we carried with us on our journey. And although it is a well-known human weakness that a thing at the time we miss it has an exaggerated value and seems less dispensable than the things we have, and although the loss of many of the articles which troubled us so much in the Morbio gorge did, in fact, turn up again later, or finally did not prove so indispensable-yet, despite all this, it is unfortunately true that we did at that time, with quite justifiable alarm, confirm the loss of a whole series of extremely important things.</div><div> The further extraordinary and singular thing was this: the objects that were missing, whether they appeared again later or not, assumed their importance by degrees, and gradually all the things believed lost, which we had wrongly missed so much and to which we had mistakenly attached so much importance, turned up again in our stores. In order to express here quite clearly what was true yet altogether inexplicable, it must be said that during the course of our further journey, tools, valuables, cards and documents which were all lost seemed, to our shame, to be indispensable. Quite frankly, it seemed as if each one of us stretched his entire imagination to persuade himself of terrible, irreplaceable losses, as if each one endeavored to conceive as lost that which was most important to him and to mourn over it; with one it was the passports, with another the maps, with another it was the Letter of Credit to the Caliph; it was this thing with one, that thing with another. And although in the end it was clear that one article after the other which was believed lost was either not lost at all or was unimportant or dispensable, there did remain one single thing that was really valuable, an inestimably important, absolutely fundamental and indispensable document that was really indisputably lost. But now opinions were ineffectually exchanged as to whether this document, which had disappeared with the servant Leo, had really been in our luggage. There was complete agreement about the great value of this document and that its loss was irreplaceable, and yet how few of us (amongst them myself) could declare with certainty that this document had been taken with us on the journey. One man asserted that a similar document had certainly been carried in Leo's linen bag; this was not the original document at all, but naturally only a copy; others declared that it had never been intended to take either the document itself or a copy on the journey, as this would have made a mockery of the whole meaning of our journey. This led to heated arguments and further demonstrated that there were various completely conflicting opinions about the whereabouts of the original (it was immaterial whether we only had the copy and whether we had lost it or not). The document, it was declared, was deposited with the government in Kyffhäuser. No, said another, it lies buried in the urn which contains the ashes of our deceased master. Nonsense, said still another, the League document was drawn up by the master in the original characters known only to himself and it was burned with the master's corpse at his behest. Inquiries regarding the original document were meaningless, because after the master's death it was not possible for anyone to read it. But it was certainly necessary to ascertain where the four (some said six) translations of the original document were, which were made during the master's lifetime under his supervision. It was said that Chinese, Greek, Hebrew and Latin translations existed, and they were deposited in the four old capitals. Many other opinions and views were expressed; many clung obstinately to them, others were convinced first by one then by another opposing argument, and then soon changed their minds again. In brief, from that time, certainty and unity no longer existed in our community, although the great idea still kept us together.</div><div> How well I remember those first disputes! They were something so new and unheard-of in our hitherto perfectly united League. They were conducted with respect and politeness-at least at the beginning. At first they led neither to fierce conflicts nor personal reproaches or insults-at first we were still an inseparable, united brotherhood throughout the world. I still hear their voices, I still see our camping ground where the first of these debates was conducted. I see the golden autumn leaves falling here and there amongst the unusually serious faces. I can see one on a knee, another lying on a hat. I listened, feeling more and more distressed and fearful, but amidst all the exchange of opinions I was inwardly quite sure of my belief, sadly sure; namely, that the original, genuine document had been in Leo's bag, and that it had disappeared and was lost with him. However gloomy this belief might be, still it was a belief. It was a firm one and gave me a feeling of certainty. At that time I truly thought that I would willingly exchange this belief for a more hopeful one. Only later, when I had lost this sad belief and was susceptible to all and sundry opinions, did I realize what I had possessed in my belief.</div><div> I see that the tale cannot be told in this way. But how can it be told, this tale of a unique journey, of a unique communion of minds, of such a wonderfully exalted and spiritual life? I should like so very much, as one of the last survivors of our community, to save some records of our great cause. I feel like the old surviving servant of perhaps one of the Paladins of Charles the Great, who recalls a stirring series of deeds and wonders, the images and memories of which will disappear with him if he is not successful in passing some of them on to posterity by means of word or picture, tale or song. But through what expedient is it possible to tell the story of the Journey to the East? I do not know. Already this first endeavor, this attempt begun with the best intentions, leads me into the boundless and incomprehensible. I simply wanted to try to depict what has remained in my memory of the course of events and individual details of our Journey to the East. Nothing seemed more simple. And now, when I have hardly related anything, I am brought to a halt by a single small episode which I had not originally thought of at all, the episode of Leo's disappearance. Instead of a fabric, I hold in my hands a bundle of a thousand knotted threads which would occupy hundreds of hands for years to disentangle and straighten out, even if every thread did not become terribly brittle and break between the fingers as soon as it is handled and gently drawn.</div><div> I imagine that every historian is similarly affected when he begins to record the events of some period and wishes to portray them sincerely. Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.</div><div> If it is so difficult to relate connectedly a number of events which have really taken place and have been attested, it is in my case much more difficult, for everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves, just as our community, the strongest in the world, has been able to dissolve. There is no unit, no center, no point around which the wheel resolves.</div><div> Our Journey to the East and our League, the basis of our community, has been the most important thing, indeed the only important thing in my life, compared with which my own individual life has appeared completely unimportant. And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane. I put my pen away with the sincere intention and hope of continuing tomorrow or some other time, or rather to begin anew, but at the back of my intention and hope, at the back of my really tremendous urge to relate our story, there remains a dreadful doubt. It is the doubt that arose during the search for Leo in the valley of Morbio. This doubt does not only ask the question, "Is your story capable of being told?" It also asks the question, "Was it possible to experience it?" We recall examples of participants in the World War who, although by no means short of facts and attested stories, must at times have entertained the same doubts.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> III</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> Since I wrote the foregoing, I have pondered over my project again and again and tried to find a way out of my difficulty. I have not found a solution. I am still confronted by chaos. But I have vowed not to give in, and in the moment of making this vow a happy memory passed through my mind like a ray of sunshine. It was similar, it seemed to me, quite similar to how I felt when we commenced our expedition; then also we undertook something apparently impossible, then also we apparently traveled in the dark, not knowing our direction and not having the slightest prospects. Yet we had within us something stronger than reality or probability, and that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action. I shuddered at the recollection of this sentiment, and at the moment of this blissful shudder, everything became clear, everything seemed possible again.</div><div> Whatever happens, I have decided to exercise my will. Even if I have to re-commence my difficult story ten times, a hundred times, and always arrive at the same cul-de-sac, just the same I will begin again a hundred times. If I cannot assemble the pictures into a significant whole again, I will present each single fragment as faithfully as possible. And as far as it is now still possible, I will be mindful of the first principle of our great period, never to rely on and let myself be disconcerted by reason, always to know that faith is stronger than so-called reality.</div><div> In the meantime, I did make a sincere attempt to approach my goal in a practical and sensible manner. I went to see a friend of my youth who lives in this town and is editor of a newspaper. His name is Lukas. He had taken part in the World War and had published a book about it which had a large circulation. Lukas received me in a friendly manner. He was obviously pleased to see a former school-friend again. I had two long conversations with him.</div><div> I tried to make him understand my position. I scorned all evasion. I told him frankly that I was a participant in that great enterprise of which he must also have heard, in the so-called "Journey to the East," or the League expedition, or whatever it was then described as by the public. Oh yes, he smiled ironically, he certainly remembered it. In his circle of friends, this singular episode was mostly called, perhaps somewhat disrespectfully, "the Children's Crusade." This movement was not taken quite seriously in his circle. It had indeed been compared with some kind of theosophical movement or brotherhood. Just the same, they had been very surprised at the periodic successes of the undertaking. They had read with due respect about the courageous journey through Upper Swabia, of the triumph at Bremgarten, of the surrender of the Tessin mountain village, and had at times wondered whether the movement would like to place itself at the service of a republican government. Then, to be sure, the matter apparently petered out. Several of the former leaders left the movement; indeed, in some way they seemed to be ashamed of it and no longer wished to remember it. News about it came through very sparingly and it was always strangely contradictory, and so the whole matter was just placed asidead acta and forgotten like so many eccentric political, religious or artistic movements of those post-war years. At that time so many prophets sprang up, so many secret societies with Messianic hopes appeared and then disappeared again leaving no trace.</div><div> His point of view was clear, it was that of a well-meaning sceptic. All others who had heard its story, but had not themselves taken part in it, probably thought the same about the League and the Journey to the East. It was not for me to convert Lukas, but I gave him some corrected information; for instance, that our League was in no way an off-shoot of the post-war years, but that it had extended throughout the whole of world history, sometimes, to be sure, under the surface, but in an unbroken line, that even certain phases of the World War were nothing else but stages in the history of our League; further, that Zoroaster, Lao Tse, Plato, Xenophon, Pythagoras, Albertus Magnus, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Novalis and Baudelaire were co-founders and brothers of our League. He smiled exactly in the way that I expected.</div><div> "Well," I said, "I have not come here to instruct you, but to learn from you. It is my passionate desire to write, perhaps not a history of the League (even a whole army of well-equipped scholars would not be in a position to do this), but to tell quite simply the story of our journey. But I am quite unsuccessful in even approaching the subject. It is not a question of literary ability; I think I have this. Moreover, I have no ambitions in this respect. No, it is because the reality that I once experienced, together with my comrades, exists no longer, and although its memories are the most precious and vivid ones that I possess, they seem so far away, they are composed of such a different kind of fabric, that it seems as if they originated on other stars in other millennia, or as if they were hallucinations."</div><div> "I can understand that!" cried Lukas eagerly. Our conversation was only just beginning to interest him. "How well I understand! That is just how I was affected by my war experiences. I thought I had experienced them clearly and vividly, I was almost bursting with images of them; the roll of film in my head seemed miles long. But when I sat at my writing-desk, on a chair, by a table, the razed villages and woods, the earth tremors caused by heavy bombardment, the conglomeration of filth and greatness, of fear and heroism, of mangled stomachs and heads, of fear of death and grim humor, were all immeasurably remote, only a dream, were not related to anything and could not really be conceived. You know that despite this, I finally wrote my war-book and that it is now read and discussed a great deal. But do you know, I do not think that ten books like it, each one ten times better and more vivid than mine, could convey any real picture of the war to the most serious reader, if he had not himself experienced the war. And there were not so many who had. Even those who participated in it did not for a long time experience it. And if many really did so-they forgot about it again. Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget."</div><div> He was silent and looked perplexed and lost in thought. His words had confirmed my own experiences and thoughts.</div><div> After a time I asked him warily, "Then how was it possible for you to write the book?"</div><div> He thought for a moment, brought back from his reflections. "It was only possible for me to do it," he said, "because it was necessary. I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide. The book was written under this pressure and brought me the expected cure, simply because it was written, irrespective of whether it was good or bad. That was the only thing that counted. And while writing it, there was no need for me to think at all of any other reader but myself, or at the most, here and there another close war-comrade, and I certainly never thought then about the survivors, but always about those who fell in the war. While writing it, I was as if delirious or crazy, surrounded by three or four people with mutilated bodies-that is how the book was produced."</div><div> And suddenly he said-it was the end of our first conversation: "Forgive me, I cannot say any more about it, not a single word more. I cannot, I will not. Good-bye."</div><div> He pushed me out.</div><div> At our second meeting he was again calm and collected, had the same ironical smile and yet seemed to treat my problem seriously and to understand it fully. He made a few suggestions which seemed, however, of little use to me. At the end of the second and last conversation, he said to me almost casually:</div><div> "Listen, you continually come back to the episode with the servant Leo. I do not like it; it seems to be an obstacle in your way. Free yourself, throw Leo overboard; he seems to be becoming a fixed idea."</div><div> I wanted to reply that one could not write any books without fixed ideas. Instead he startled me with the quite unexpected question: "Was he really called Leo?"</div><div> There was perspiration on my brow.</div><div> "Yes," I said, "of course he was called Leo."</div><div> "Was that his Christian name?"</div><div> I stammered.</div><div> "No, his Christian name was-was-I don't know it any more. I have forgotten it. Leo was his surname. That was what everyone called him."</div><div> While I was still speaking, Lukas had seized a thick book from his writing-desk and was turning over the leaves. With amazing speed he found and put his finger on a place on an open page in the book. It was a directory, and where his finger lay stood the name Leo.</div><div> "Look," he laughed, "we already have a Leo. Andreas Leo, 69a Seilergraben. It is an unusual name; perhaps this man knows something about your Leo. Go and see him; perhaps he can tell you what you want to know. I can't say. Forgive me, my time is limited. I am very pleased to have seen you."</div><div> I reeled with stupefaction and excitement as I closed his door behind me. He was right. I could get nothing more from him.</div><div> On the very same day I went to Seilergraben, looked for the house and inquired about Mr. Andreas Leo. He lived in a room on the third floor. He was sometimes at home on Sundays and in the evenings; during the day he went to work. I inquired about his occupation. He did this, that and the other, they said; he could do manicures, chiropody and massage; he also made ointments and herbal cures. In bad times, when there was little to do, he sometimes also occupied himself by training and trimming dogs. I went away and decided it was better not to visit this man, or, at any rate, not to tell him of my intentions. Nevertheless, I was very curious to see him. I therefore watched the house during the next few days during my frequent walks, and I shall also go there today, for up till now I have not been successful in meeting Andreas Leo face to face.</div><div> Oh, the whole business is driving me to despair, and yet it makes me happy, or rather excited and eager. It gives importance to myself and my life again, and that had been very much lacking.</div><div> It is possible that the practitioners and psychologists who attribute all human action to egoistic desires are right; I cannot indeed see that a man who serves a cause all his life, who neglects his pleasures and well-being, and sacrifices himself for anything at all, really acts in the same way as a man who traffics in slaves or deals in munitions and squanders the proceeds on a life of pleasure. But no doubt I should immediately get the worst of it and be beaten in an argument with such a psychologist, for psychologists are, of course, people who always win. As far as I am concerned, they may be right. Then everything else that I have considered good and fine, and for which I have made sacrifices, has only been my egoistic desires. Indeed, every day I see my egoism more clearly in my plan to write some kind of history of the Journey to the East. At the beginning, it seemed to me that I was undertaking a laborious task in the name of a noble cause, but I see more and more that in the description of my journey I am only aiming at the same thing as Mr. Lukas with his war-book; namely, at saving my life by giving it meaning again.</div><div> If I could only see the way! If I could only make one step forward.</div><div> "Throw Leo overboard, free yourself from Leo!" Lukas said to me. I could just as much throw my head or my stomach overboard to get rid of them!</div><div> Dear God, help me a little.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> IV</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> Now everything seems different again, and I do not yet know whether it has helped me in my problem or not. But I have had an experience, something has happened to me which I never expected-or no, did I not really expect it, did I not anticipate, hope for and really fear it? Yes, I did. Yet it remains strange and improbable enough.</div><div> I went to Seilergraben frequently, twenty times or more, at what I thought were favorable times, and often wandered past No. 69a, always with the thought, "I shall try once more, and if there is nothing in it I shall not come again." Yet I went again and again, and the day before yesterday my wish was fulfilled. Oh, and what a fulfillment it was.</div><div> As I approached the house of which I now knew every crack and fissure in its grey-green plaster, I heard the tune whistled of a little song or dance, a popular tune, coming from the upper window. I did not know anything yet, but I listened. The tune stirred my memory and some dormant recollections came to the fore. The music was banal but the whistling was wonderfully sweet, with soft and pleasing notes, unusually pure, as happy and as natural as the songs of birds. I stood and listened, enchanted, and at the same time strangely moved without, however, having any kind of accompanying thoughts. Or if I did, it was perhaps that it must be a very happy and amiable man who could whistle like that. For several minutes I stood there rooted to the spot and listened. An old man with a sick, sunken face went by. He saw me standing and listened too, just for a moment, then smiled at me with understanding as he went on. His beautiful, far-seeing old man's look seemed to say: "You stay there, one does not hear whistling like that every day." The old man's glance cheered me. I was sorry when he went past. At the same moment, however, I immediately realized that this whistling was the fulfillment of all my wishes, that the whistler must be Leo.</div><div> It was growing dark but there was still no light in any window. The tune, with its simple variations, was finished. There was silence. "He will now make a light up there," I thought, but everything remained in darkness. Then I heard a door being opened upstairs and soon I also heard footsteps on the stairs. The door of the house was opened and someone came out, and his walk was like his whistling, light and jolly, but steady, healthy and youthful. It was a very slim, hatless man, not very tall, who walked there, and now my feelings was changed to certainty. It was Leo; not only the Leo from the directory, it was Leo himself, our dear traveling companion and servant Leo, whose disappearance ten or more years ago had brought us so much sadness and confusion. I nearly addressed him in the moment of my initial joy and surprise. Then I only just remembered that I had also often heard him whistling during the Journey to the East. They were the same strains of previous times, and yet how strangely different they sounded to me! A feeling of sadness came over me like a stab in the heart: oh, how different everything had become since then, the sky, the air, the seasons, dreams, sleep, day and night! How greatly and terribly everything had changed for me when, through memory of the past alone, a whistle and the rhythm of a known step could affect me so deeply and give me so much pleasure and pain!</div><div> The man went close by me, his bare head, supple and serene on his bare neck, appeared above his blue open-neck shirt. The figure moved easily and gaily along the darkening lane, hardly audible in thin sandals or gym shoes. I followed him without any particular intention. How could I help but follow him! He walked down the lane, and although his step was light, effortless and youthful, it was also in keeping with the evening; it was of the same quality as the twilight, it was friendly and at one with the hour, with the subdued sounds from the center of the town, with the half-light of the first lamps which were just beginning to appear.</div><div> He turned into the small park at St. Paul's Gate, disappeared amongst the tall round bushes, and I hurried so that I should not lose him. There he was again; he was sauntering slowly alongside the lilac bushes and the acacia. The path divided into two through the little wood. There were a couple of benches at the edge of the sward. Here under the trees it was already dark. Leo went past the first bench; a pair of lovers were sitting on it. The next bench was empty. He sat down, leaned against the bench, pressed his head back and for a time looked up at the foliage and the clouds. Then he took a small round white metal box out of his coat pocket, put it by his side on the bench, unscrewed the lid and slowly began to take somediing out of the box which he put into his mouth and ate with enjoyment. Meantime I walked to and from the entrance to the wood; I then went up to his bench and sat down at the other end. He looked up, gazed at me with clear grey eyes and went on eating. He was eating dried fruits, a few prunes and half apricots. He took them one after the other between two fingers, pressed and fingered each one a little, put them in his mouth and chewed them for a long time with enjoyment. It took a long time before he came to the last one and ate it. He then closed the box again and put it away, leaned back and stretched out his legs. I now saw that his cloth shoes had soles of plaited rope.</div><div> "It will rain tonight," he said suddenly, I knew not whether to me or to himself.</div><div> "Yes, it looks like it," I said, somewhat embarrassed, for as he had not yet recognized my figure and walk, it was possible and I was almost certain that he would now recognize me by my voice.</div><div> But no, he did not recognize me at all, not even by my voice, and although that had been my first wish, it nevertheless gave me a feeling of great disappointment. He did not recognize me. While he had remained the same after ten years and had apparently not aged at all, it was quite different with me, sadly different.</div><div> "You whistle very well," I said. "I heard you earlier on in Seilergraben. It gave me very much pleasure. I used to be a musician."</div><div> "Oh, were you!" he said in a friendly manner. "It's a great profession. Have you given it up?"</div><div> "Yes, for the time being. I have even sold my violin."</div><div> "Have you? What a pity! Are you in difficulties-that is to say, are you hungry? There is still some food at my house. I also have a little money in my purse."</div><div> "Oh, no," I said quickly, "I did not mean that. I am in quite good circumstances. I have more than I need. But thank you very much; it was very kind of you to make the offer. One does not often meet such kind people."</div><div> "Don't you think so? Well, maybe! People are often very strange. You are a strange person, too."</div><div> "Am I? Why?"</div><div> "Well, because you have enough money and yet you sell your violin. Don't you like music any more?"</div><div> "Oh, yes, but sometimes a man no longer finds pleasure in something he previously loved. Sometimes a man sells his violin or throws it against the wall, or a painter burns all his pictures. Have you never heard of such a thing?"</div><div> "Oh, yes. That comes from despair. It does happen. I even knew two people who committed suicide. Such people are stupid and can be dangerous. One just cannot help some people. But what do you do now that you no longer have your violin?"</div><div> "Oh, this, that and the other. I do not really do much. I am no longer young and I am also often ill. But why do you keep on talking about this violin? It is not really so important."</div><div> "The violin? It made me think of King David."</div><div> "King David? What has he to do with it?"</div><div> "He was also a musician. When he was quite young he used to play for King Saul and sometimes dispelled his bad moods with music. Later he became a king himself, a great king full of cares, having all sorts of moods and vexations. He wore a crown and conducted wars and all that kind of thing, and he also did many really wicked things and became very famous. But when I think of his life, the most beautiful part of it all is about the young David with his harp playing music to poor Saul, and it seems a pity to me that he later became a king. He was a much happier and better person when he was a musician."</div><div> "Of course he was!" I cried rather passionately. "Of course, he was younger then and more handsome and happier. But one does not always remain young; your David would in time have grown older and uglier and would have been full of cares even if he had remained a musician. So he became the great David, performed his deeds and composed his psalms. Life is not just a game!"</div><div> Leo then rose and bowed. "It is growing dark," he said, "and it will rain soon. I do not know a great deal more about the deeds that David performed, and whether they were really great. To be quite frank, I do not know very much more about his psalms either, but I should not like to say anything against them. But no account of David can prove to me that life is not just a game. That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy-a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier. Good-bye, pleased to have met you!"</div><div> This strange, lovable man began to move away in his light, steady and pleasing gait, and was on the point of disappearing when all my restraint and self-control broke down. I ran after him in despair and cried imploringly, "Leo! Leo! You are Leo, aren't you? Do you not know me any more? We were League brothers together and should still be so. We were both travelers on the Journey to the East. Have you really forgotten me, Leo? Do you really no longer remember the Crown Watchers, Klingsor and Goldmund, the Festival in Bremgarten and the gorge at Morbio Inferiore? Leo, have pity on me!"</div><div> He did not run away as I had feared but he also did not turn round; he walked steadily on as if he had heard nothing but gave me time to catch up to him, and did not seem to object to my joining him.</div><div> "You are so troubled and hasty," he said kindly, "that is not a good thing. It distorts the face and makes one ill. We shall walk quite slowly-it is so soothing. The few drops of rain are wonderful, aren't they? They come from the air like Eau de Cologne."</div><div> "Leo," I pleaded, "have pity! Tell me just one thing; do you know me yet?"</div><div> "Ah," he said kindly, and went on speaking as if to a sick or drunken man, "you will be better now; it was only excitement. You ask if I know you. Well, what person really knows another or even himself? As for me, I am not one who understands people at all. I am not interested in them. Now, I understand dogs quite well, and also birds and cats-but I don't really know you, sir."</div><div> "But do you not belong to the League? Did you not come on the journey with us?"</div><div> "I am still on the journey, sir, and I still belong to the League. So many come and go; one knows people and yet does not know them. It is much easier with dogs. Wait, stay here a moment!"</div><div> He raised a warning finger. We stood on the darkening garden-path which was becoming increasingly enveloped in a thin descending dampness. Leo pursed up his lips and sent out a long, vibrating, soft whistle, waited a while and whistled again. I drew back a little as, suddenly, close to us, behind the trellis-work railing at which we stood, a large Alsatian dog jumped out of the bushes and, whining with pleasure, pressed close to the fence in order to be stroked by Leo's fingers between the bars and wires. The powerful animal's eyes gleamed a light green, and whenever his glance alighted on me he growled deep down in his throat. It was like distant thunder, hardly audible.</div><div> "This is the Alsatian dog, Necker," said Leo, introducing me. "We are very good friends. Necker, here is a former violinist. You must not do anything to him, not even bark at him." We stood there, and Leo gently scratched the dog's damp coat through the railing. It really was a pretty scene; it pleased me very much to see how friendly he was with the dog and the pleasure that this nocturnal greeting gave him. At the same time, it was painful to me and seemed hardly bearable that Leo should be so friendly with this Alsatian, and probably with many, perhaps with all the dogs in the district, while a world of aloofness separated him from me. The friendship and intimacy which I beseechingly and humbly sought seemed not only to belong to this dog Necker, but every animal, to every raindrop, to every spot of ground on which Leo trod. He seemed to dedicate himself steadfastly and to rest continually in an easy, balanced relationship with his surroundings, knowing all things, known and beloved by all. Only with me, who loved and needed him so much, was there no contact, only from me did he dissociate himself; he regarded me in an unfriendly and cool fashion, was distant with me and had erased me from his memory.</div><div> We walked slowly on. On the other side of the railing the Alsatian accompanied him, making soft, contented sounds of affection and pleasure, but without forgetting my undesirable presence, for several times he suppressed his growling tone of defence and hostility for Leo's sake.</div><div> "Forgive me," I began again, "I am attaching myself to you and taking up your time. Naturally, you want to go home and go to bed."</div><div> "Not at all," he said with a smile. "I do not mind strolling along throughout the night like this. I am not lacking in either the time or the desire if it is not too much for you."</div><div> He said this in a very friendly manner and certainly without reservation. But he had hardly uttered the words when I suddenly felt in my head and in every muscle of my body how terribly tired I was, and how fatiguing every step of this futile and embarrassing nocturnal wandering was to me.</div><div> "I am really very tired," I said dejectedly, "I have only just realized it. There is also no sense in wandering about all night in the rain and being a nuisance to other people."</div><div> "As you wish," he said politely.</div><div> "Oh, Mr. Leo, you did not talk to me like that during the League's Journey to the East. Have you really forgotten all about it? Oh, well, it is no use. Do not let me keep you any longer. Good-night."</div><div> He disappeared quickly into the dark night. I remained alone, foolish, with my head bent. I had lost the game. He did not know me; he did not want to know me; he made fun of me.</div><div> I went back along the path; the dog Necker barked angrily behind the railing. I shivered from weariness, grief and loneliness in the damp warmth of the summer night.</div><div> I had experienced similar hours in the past. During such periods of despair it seemed to me as if I, a lost pilgrim, had reached the extreme edge of the world, and there was nothing left for me to do but to satisfy my last desire: to let myself fall from the edge of the world into the void-to death. In the course of time this despair returned many times; the compelling suicidal impulse, however, had been diverted and had almost vanished. Death was no longer nothingness, a void, negation. It had also become many other things to me. I now accepted the hours of despair as one accepts acute physical pain; one endures it, complainingly or defiantly; one feels it swell and increase, and sometimes there is a raging or mocking curiosity as to how much further it can go, to what extent the pain can still increase.</div><div> All the disgust for my disillusioned life which, since my return from the unsuccessful journey to the East, had become increasingly worthless and spiritless, all disbelief in myself and my abilities, all envious and regretful longing for the good and great times which I had once experienced, grew like a pain within me, grew as high as a tree, like a mountain, tugged at me, and was all related to the former task that I had begun, to the account of the Journey to the East and the League. It now seemed to me that even its accomplishment was no longer desirable or worthwhile. Only one hope still seemed worthwhile to me-to cleanse and redeem myself to some extent through my work, through my service to the memory of that great time, to bring myself once again into contact with the League and its experiences.</div><div> When I reached home I turned on the light, sat down at my desk in my wet clothes, my hat on my head, and wrote a letter. I wrote ten, twelve, twenty pages of grievances, remorse and entreaty to Leo. I described my need to him, conjured up images of our common experiences, of our former mutual friends. I bewailed the endless extreme difficulties which had shattered my noble enterprise. The weariness of the moment had disappeared; excited, I sat there and wrote. Despite all difficulties, I wrote, I would endure the worst possible thing rather than divulge a single secret of the League. Despite everything, I would not fail to complete my work in memory of the Journey to the East, in glorification of the League. As if in a fever, I covered page after page with hastily written words. The grievances, indictments and self-accusations tumbled from me like water from a breaking jug, without reflection, without faith, without hope of reply, only with the desire to unburden myself. While it was yet night I took the thick, confused letter to the nearest letter-box. Then, at last, it was nearly morning. I turned out the light, went to the small attic-bedroom next to my living-room and went to bed. I fell asleep immediately and slept very deeply and for a long time.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> V</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> After awakening and dozing off again several times, I awoke the following day with a headache but feeling rested. To my extreme astonishment, pleasure and also embarrassment, I found Leo in the living-room. He was sitting on the edge of a chair and looked as if he had been waiting a long time.</div><div> "Leo," I cried, "you have come!"</div><div> "They have sent me for you from the League," he said. "You wrote me a letter in connection with it. I gave it to the officials. You are to appear before the High Throne. Can we go?"</div><div> In confusion I hastened to put on my shoes. The desk, disarranged the previous night, still had a somewhat disturbed and disorderly appearance. For the moment I hardly knew any more what I had written there so forcibly and full of anguish a few hours ago. Still, it did not seem to have been in vain. Something had happened. Leo had come.</div><div> Suddenly, for the first time, I realized the significance of his words. So there was still a "League" of which I no longer knew anything, which existed without me and which no longer considered me as belonging to it! There was still a League and the High Throne! There were still the officials; they had sent for me! I went hot and cold at the realization. I had lived in this town many months, occupied with my notes about the League and our journey and did not know whether the rest of the League still existed, where it was, and whether I was perhaps its last member. Indeed, to be quite frank, at certain times I was not sure whether the League and my membership of it were ever real. And now Leo stood there, sent by the League to fetch me. I was remembered, I was summoned, they wanted to listen to me, perhaps to pass judgment on me. Good! I was ready. I was ready to show that I had not been unfaithful to the League. I was ready to obey. Whether the officials punished me or pardoned me, I was ready in advance to accept everything, to agree with their judgment in everything and to be obedient to them.</div><div> We set off. Leo went on ahead, and again, as I did many years ago when I watched him and the way he walked, I had to admire him as a good and perfect servant. He walked along the lanes in front of me, nimbly and patiently, indicating the way; he was the perfect guide, the perfect servant at his task, the perfect official. Yet he put my patience to no small test. The League had summoned me, I was awaited by the High Throne, everything was at stake for me; the whole of my future life would be decided, the whole of my past life would now either retain or completely lose its meaning-I trembled with expectation, pleasure, anxiety and suppressed fear. And so the route that Leo took seemed, in my impatience, intolerably long, for I had to follow my guide for more than two hours by way of the strangest and seemingly most capricious detours. Leo kept me waiting twice in front of a church in which he went to pray. For a long time that seemed endless to me, he remained meditating and absorbed in front of the old town-hall, and told me about its foundation in the fifteenth century by a famous member of the League. And although the way he took this walk seemed so painstaking, zealous and purposeful, I became quite confused by the detours, round-abouts and zig-zags by which he approached his goal. The walk, which took us all morning, could easily have been done in a quarter of an hour.</div><div> At last he led me into a sleepy, suburban lane, and into a very large, silent building. Outside it looked like an extended Council building or a museum. At first there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Corridors and stairs were deserted and resounded at our footsteps. Leo began to search among the passages, stairs and antechambers. Once, he cautiously opened a big door, on the other side of which we saw a crowded artist's studio; in front of an easel stood the artist Klingsor in his shirt-sleeves-oh, how many years was it since I had seen his beloved face! But I did not dare to greet him; the time was not yet ripe for that. I was expected. I had been summoned. Klingsor did not pay very much attention to us. He nodded to Leo; either he did not see me or did not recognize me, and silently indicated to us in a friendly but decisive way to go out, not tolerating any interruption of his work.</div><div> Finally, at the top of the immense building, we arrived at a garret-storey, which smelled of paper and cardboard, and all along the walls for many hundreds of yards protruded cupboard-doors, backs of books and bundles of documents: a gigantic archive, a vast chancery. Nobody took any notice of us; everyone was silently occupied. It seemed to me as if the whole world, including the starry heavens, was governed or at least recorded and observed from there. For a long time we stood there and waited; many archive and library officials hastened around us silently with catalogue dockets and numbers in their hands. Ladders were placed in position and mounted, lifts and small trucks were carefully and quietly set into motion. Finally, Leo began to sing. I listened to the tune, deeply moved; it had once been very familiar to me. It was the melody of one of our League songs.</div><div> At the sound of the song, everything immediately sprang into movement. The officials drew back, the hall extended into dusky remoteness. The industrious people, small and unreal, worked in the gigantic archive region in the background. The foreground, however, was spacious and empty. The hall extended to an impressive length. In the middle, arranged in strict order, there were many benches, and partly from the background and partly out of the numerous doors came many officials who slowly approached the benches and one by one sat down on them. One row of benches after the other was slowly filled. The structure of benches gradually rose and culminated in a high throne, which was not yet occupied. The solemn Synedrium was crowded right up to the throne. Leo looked at me with a warning glance to be patient, silent and respectful, and disappeared amongst the crowd; all of a sudden he was gone and I could no longer see him. But here and there amidst the officials who assembled around the High Throne I perceived familiar faces, serious or smiling. I saw the figure of Albertus Magnus, the ferryman Vasudeva, the artist Klingsor, and others.</div><div> At last it became quiet and the Speaker stepped forward. Small and alone I stood before the High Throne, prepared for everything, in a state of great anxiety, but also in full accord with what would take place and be resolved here.</div><div> Clearly and evenly the Speaker's voice rang through the hall. "Self-accusation of a deserter League brother," I heard him announce. My knees trembled. It was a question of my life. But it was right that it should be so; everything must now be put in order. The Speaker continued.</div><div> "Is your name H.H.? Did you join in the march through Upper Swabia, and in the festival at Bremgarten? Did you desert your colors shortly after Morbio Inferiore? Did you confess that you wanted to write a story of the Journey to the East? Did you consider yourself hampered by your vow of silence about the League's secrets?"</div><div> I answered question after question with "Yes," even those which were incomprehensible and terrifying to me.</div><div> The officials conferred in whispers and with gestures for a short time; then the Speaker stepped forward again and announced:</div><div> "The self-accuser is herewith empowered to reveal publicly every law and secret of the League which is known to him. Moreover, the whole of the League's archives are placed at his disposal for his work."</div><div> The Speaker drew back. The officials disbanded and again slowly disappeared, some into the background of the hall and some through the exits; there was complete silence in the large hall. I was looking anxiously around me when I saw something lying on one of the chancery documents which seemed familiar to me. When I picked it up, I recognized my work, my delicate offspring, the manuscript I had commenced. "The Story of the Journey to the East," by H.H., was inscribed on the blue envelope. I seized it and read the small, close, hand-written, oft-times crossed out and corrected pages. In haste, eager to work, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that now at last, with approval from higher quarters, indeed assistance, I was to be allowed to complete my task. When I considered that no vow any longer bound me, that I had access to the archives, to those immense treasure-chambers, my task seemed to me greater and more worth-while than ever.</div><div> However, the more pages I read of my handwriting, the less did I like the manuscript. Even in my former most despondent hours it had never seemed so futile and absurd to me as now. Everything seemed so confused and stupid; the clearest relationships were distorted, the most obvious were forgotten, the trivial and the unimportant pushed into the foreground. It must be written again, right from the beginning. As I continued reading the manuscript, I had to cross out sentence after sentence, and as I crossed them out, they crumbled up on the paper, and the clear, sloping letters separated into assorted fragments, into strokes and points, into circles, small flowers and stars, and the pages were covered like carpets with graceful, meaningless, ornamental designs. Soon there was nothing more left of my text; on the other hand, there was much unused paper left for my work. I pulled myself together. I tried to see things clearly. Naturally, it was not previously possible for me to present an impartial and clear account, because everything was concerned with secrets which I was forbidden to disclose on account of my vow to the League. I had tried to avoid an objective presentation of the story, and without regard to the more important relationships, aims and purposes, I had simply restricted myself to my personal experiences. But one could see where that had led. On the other hand, there was no longer a pledge of silence and no more restrictions. I was given complete official permission, and, moreover, the whole of the inexhaustible archives lay open to me.</div><div> It was clear to me that even if my former work had not broken up into ornamentation, I had to begin the whole thing afresh, with a new foundation, and build it up again. I decided to begin with a short account of the League, its foundation and constitution. The extensive, endless, gigantic labelled catalogues on all the tables, which reached far into the distance and semi-darkness, must surely give an answer to all my questions.</div><div> First of all I decide to examine the archives at random. I had to learn how to use this tremendous machine. Naturally, I looked for the League document before anything else.</div><div> "League document," it stated in the catalogue, "see section Chrysostomos, group V, verse 39, 8."-Right, I found the section, the group and the verse quite easily. The archives were wonderfully arranged. And now I held the League document in my hand. I had to be prepared for the possibility that I might not be able to read it. As a matter of fact, I could not read it. It was written in Greek characters, it seemed to me, and I understood a certain amount of Greek, but for one thing it was in extremely ancient, strange writing, the characters of which, despite apparent clarity, were for the most part illegible to me, and, for another thing, the text was written in dialect or in a secret symbolical language, of which I only occasionally understood a word as if from a distance, by sound and analogy. But I was not yet discouraged. Even if the document remained unreadable, its characters brought back to me vivid memories of the past. In particular, I clearly saw my friend Longus writing Greek and Hebrew characters in the garden in the evening, the characters changing into birds, dragons and snakes in the night.</div><div> Looking through the catalogue, I trembled at the abundance of material that awaited me there. I came across many familiar words and many well-known names. With a start, I came across my own name, but I did not dare to consult the archives about it-who could bear to hear the verdict of an omniscient Court of Law on oneself? On the other hand, I found, for example, the name of the artist Paul Klee, whose acquaintance I had made during the journey and who was a friend of Klingsor's. I looked up his number in the archives. I found there a small gold-plated dish on which a clover was either painted or engraved. The first of its three leaves represented a small blue sailing-boat, the second a fish with colored scales and the third looked like a telegram-form on which was written:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> As blue as snow,</div><div> Is Paul like Klee.*</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> * Note: Klee = clover</div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> It also gave me a melancholy pleasure to read about Klingsor, Longus, Max and Tilli. Also I could not resist the desire to learn something more about Leo. On Leo's catalogue label was written:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> Cave!</div><div> Archiepisc. XIX. Diacon. D. VII.</div><div> Corno Amman.6</div><div> Cave!</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> The two "Cave" warnings impressed me. I could not bring myself to penetrate this secret. However, with every new attempt, I began to realize more and more what an undreamt-of abundance of material, knowledge and magic formulae these archives contained. It included, it seemed to me, the whole world.</div><div> After happy or bewildering excursions into many branches of knowledge, I returned several times to the label "Leo" with ever-increasing curiosity. Each time the double "Cave" deterred me. Then, while going through another filing cabinet, I came across the word "Fatima," with the notes:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> princ. orient. 2</div><div> noct. mill. 983</div><div> hort. delic. 07</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> I looked for and found the place in the archives. There lay a tiny locket which could be opened and contained a miniature portrait of a ravishingly beautiful princess, which in an instant reminded me of all the thousand and one nights, of all the tales of my youth, of all the dreams and wishes of that great period when, in order to travel to Fatima in the Orient, I had served my novitiate and had reported myself as a member of the League. The locket was wrapped in a finely-spun mauve silk kerchief, which had an immeasurably remote and sweet fragrance, reminiscent of princesses and the East. As I inhaled this remote, rare, magic fragrance, I was suddenly and powerfully overwhelmed with the realization of the sweet magic which had enveloped me when I commenced my pilgrimage to the East, and how the pilgrimage was shattered by treacherous and, in fact, unknown obstacles, how the magic had then vanished more and more, and what desolation, disillusionment and barren despair had since been my life's breath, my food and drink! I could no longer see the kerchief or the portrait, so thick was the veil of tears which covered my eyes. Ah, now, I thought, the portrait of the Arabian princess could no longer suffice to act as a charm against the world and hell, and make me into a knight and crusader; I would now need other stronger charms. But how sweet, how innocent, how blissful had been that dream which had haunted my youth, which had made me a story-teller, a musician and a novitiate, and had led me to Morbio!</div><div> Sounds awakened me from my meditation. From all sides the unending spaciousness of the archive chamber confronted me eerily. A new thought, a new pain shot threw me like a flash of lightning. I, in my simplicity, wanted to write the story of the League, I, who could not decipher or understand one-thousandth part of those millions of scripts, books, pictures and references in the archives! Humbled, unspeakably foolish, unspeakably ridiculous, not understanding myself, feeling extremely small, I saw myself standing in the midst of this thing with which I had been allowed to play a little in order to make me realize what the League was and what I was myself.</div><div> The officials came through the numerous doors in enormous numbers. I could still recognize many of them through my tears. I recognized Jup, the magician, I recognized Lindhorst, the archivist, I recognized Mozart dressed as Pablo. The illustrious assembly filled the many rows of seats, which became higher and narrower at the black; over the throne which formed the top, I saw a shining golden canopy.</div><div> The Speaker stepped forward and announced: "The League is ready to pass judgment, through its officials, on the self-accuser H., who felt bound to keep silent about League secrets, and who has now realized how strange and blasphemous was his intention to write the story of a journey to which he was not equal, and an account of a League in whose existence he no longer believed and to which he had become unfaithful."</div><div> He turned towards me and said in his clear, proclamatory voice: "Self-accuser H., do you agree to recognize the Court of Justice and to submit to its judgment?"</div><div> "Yes," I replied.</div><div> "Self-accuser H.," he continued, "do you agree that the Court of Justice of the officials pass judgment on you without the President in the Chair, or do you desire the President himself to pass judgment on you."</div><div> "I agree," I said, "to be judged by the officials, either with or without the President in the Chair."</div><div> The Speaker was about to reply when, from the very back of the hall, a soft voice said: "The President is ready to pass judgment himself."</div><div> The sound of this soft voice shook me strangely. Right from the depths of the room, from the remote horizons of the archives, came a man. His walk was light and peaceful, his robe sparkled with gold. He came nearer amid the silence of the assembly, and I recognized his walk, I recognized his movements, and finally I recognized his face. It was Leo. In a magnificent, festive robe, he climbed through the rows of officials to the High Throne like a Pope. Like a magnificent, rare flower, he carried the brilliance of his attire up the stairs. Each row of officials rose to greet him as he passed. He bore his radiant office conscientiously, humbly, dutifully, as humbly as a holy Pope or patriarch bears his insignia.</div><div> I was deeply intrigued and moved in anticipation of the judgment which I was humbly prepared to accept, whether it would now bring punishment or grace. I was no less deeply moved and amazed that it was Leo, the former porter and servant, who now stood at the head of the whole League and was ready to pass judgment on me. But I was still more stirred, amazed, startled and happy at the great discovery of the day: that the League was as completely stable and mighty as ever, that it was not Leo and the League who had deserted and disillusioned me, but only that I had been so weak and foolish as to misinterpret my own experiences, to doubt the League, to consider the Journey to the East a failure, and to regard myself as the survivor and chronicler of a concluded and forgotten tale, while I was nothing more than a run-away, a traitor, a deserter. Amazement and joy lay in this recognition. I stood there, small and humble, at the foot of the High Throne, from which I had once been accepted as a brother of the League, from which I had once undergone my novitiate ceremony, had received the League ring and had immediately been sent to the servant Leo on the journey. And in the middle of everything, I was aware of a new sin, a new inexplicable loss, a new shame: I no longer possessed the League ring. I had lost it, I did not know when or where, and I had not missed it once until this day!</div><div> Meantime, the President, the golden-clad Leo, began to speak in his beautiful, gentle voice; his words reached me gently and comfortingly, as gentle and comforting as sunshine.</div><div> "The self-accuser," came the words from the High Throne, "has had the opportunity to rid himself of some of his errors. There is much to be said against him. It may be conceivable and very excusable that he was unfaithful to the League, that he reproached the League with his own failings and follies, that he doubted its continuation, that he had the strange ambition to become the historian of the League. All this does not weigh heavily against him. They are, if the self-accuser will permit me the phrase, only novitiate stupidities. They can be dismissed with a smile."</div><div> I breathed deeply and a faint smile passed over the whole of the illustrious assembly. That the most serious of my sins, even my illusion that the League no longer existed and that I was the only disciple left, were only regarded by the President as "stupidities," as trifles, was a tremendous relief to me and at the same time sent me most definitely back to my starting-point.</div><div> "But," continued Leo, and his gentle voice was now sad and serious-"there are many more serious offences imputed to the defendant and the worst of them is that he does not stand as self-accuser for these sins, but appears to be unaware of them. He deeply regrets having wronged the League in thought; he cannot forgive himself for not recognizing the President Leo in the servant Leo, and is on the point of realizing the extent of his infidelity to the League. But while he took these sinful thoughts and follies all too seriously, and only just realizes with relief that they can be dismissed with a smile, he stubbornly forgets his real offences, which are legion, each one of which is serious enough to warrant severe punishment."</div><div> My heart beat quickly. Leo turned towards me. "Defendant H., later you will have insight to your errors and you will also be shown how to avoid them in future. But just to show you what little understanding you still have of your position, I ask you: Do you remember your walk through the town accompanied by the servant Leo, who, as messenger, had to bring you before the High Throne? Yes, you remember. And do you remember how we passed the Town Hall, the Church of St. Paul and the Cathedral, and how the servant Leo entered the Cathedral in order to kneel and pray awhile, and how you not only refrained from entering with me to perlorm your devotions in accordance with the fourth precept of your League vow, but how you remained outside, impatient and bored, waiting for the end of the tedious ceremony which seemed so unnecessary to you, which was nothing more to you than a disagreeable test of your egoistic impatience? Yes, you remember. By your behavior at the Cathedral gate alone, you have already trampled on the fundamental requirements and customs of the League. You have slighted religion, you have been contemptuous towards a League brother, you have impatiently rejected an opportunity and invitation to prayer and meditations. These sins would be unforgivable were there not special extenuating circumstances in your case."</div><div> He had now struck home. Everything would now be said; there would be no more secondary issues, no more mere stupidities. He was more than right. He had struck at my heart.</div><div> "We do not want to count up all the defendant's errors," continued the President, "he is not going to be judged according to the letter, and we know that it only needed our reminder to awaken the defendant's conscience and make him a repentant self-accuser.</div><div> "Just the same, self-accuser H., I would advise you to bring some of your other acts before the judgment of your conscience. Must I remind you of the evening when you visited the servant Leo and wished to be recognized by him as a League brother, although this was impossible, for you had made yourself unrecognizable as a League brother? Must I remind you of things which you yourself said to the servant Leo? About the sale of your violin? About the dreadful, stupid, narrow, suicidal life which you have led for years?</div><div> "There is still one more thing, League brother H., about which I should not keep silent. It is quite possible that the servant Leo did you an injustice that evening. Let us suppose that he did. The servant Leo was perhaps too strict, perhaps too rational; perhaps he did not show enough forbearance and sympathy towards you and your circumstances. But there are higher authorities and more infallible judges than the servant Leo. What was the animal's judgment on you, defendant? Do you remember the dog Necker? Do you remember his rejection and condemnation of you? He is incorruptible, he does not take sides, he is not a League brother."</div><div> He paused. Yes, the Alsatian Necker! He had certainly rejected me and condemned me. I agreed. Judgment was already passed on me by the Alsatian, already by myself.</div><div> "Self-accuser H.," began Leo again, and from the golden gleam of his robes and canopy his voice now rang out cool and bright and clear, like the voice of the commandant when he appears before Don Giovanni's door in the last Act. "Self-accuser H., you have listened to me. You have agreed with me. You have, we presume, already passed judgment on yourself?"</div><div> "Yes," I said in a soft voice, "yes."</div><div> "It is, we presume, an unfavorable judgment which you have passed on yourself?"</div><div> "Yes," I whispered.</div><div> Leo then rose from the throne and gently stretched out his arms.</div><div> "I now turn to you, my officials. You have heard and know how things have been with League brother H. It is a lot that is not unfamiliar to you; many of you have had to experience it yourself. The defendant did not know until this hour, or could not really believe, that his apostasy and aberration were a test. For a long time he did not give in. He endured it for many years, knowing nothing about the League, remaining alone, and seeing everything in which he believed in ruins. Finally, he could no longer hide and contain himself. His suffering became too great, and you know that as soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward. Brother H. was led to despair in his test, and despair is the result of each earnest attempt to understand and vindicate human life. Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding and to fulfil their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side. Defendant H. is no longer a child and is not yet fully awakened. He is still in the midst of despair. He will overcome it and thereby go through his second novitiate. We welcome him anew into the League, the meaning of which he no longer claims to understand. We give back to him his lost ring, which the servant Leo has kept for him."</div><div> The Speaker then brought the ring, kissed me on the cheek and placed the ring on my finger. Hardly had I looked at the ring, hardly had I felt its metallic coolness on my fingers, when a thousand things occurred to me, a thousand inconceivable acts of neglect. Above all, it occurred to me that the ring had four stones at equal distances apart, and that it was a rule of the League and part of the vow to turn the ring slowly on the finger at least once a day, and at each of the four stones to bring to mind one of the four basic precepts of the vow. I had not only lost the ring and had not once missed it, but during all those dreadful years I had also no longer repeated the four basic precepts or thought of them. Immediately, I tried to say them again inwardly. I had an idea what they were, they were still within me, they belonged to me as does a name which one will remember in a moment but at that particular moment cannot be recalled. No, it remained silent within me, I could not repeat the rules, I had forgotten the wording. I had forgotten the rules; for many years I had not repeated them, for many years I had not observed them and held them sacred-and yet I had considered myself a loyal League brother.</div><div> The Speaker patted my arm kindly when he observed my dismay and deep shame. Then I heard the President speak again:</div><div> "Defendant and self-accuser H., you are acquitted, but I have to tell you that it is the duty of a brother who is acquitted in such a case to enter the ranks of the officials and occupy one of their seats as soon as he has passed a test of his faith and obedience. He has the option of choosing the test. Now, brother H., answer my questions!</div><div> "Are you prepared to tame a wild dog as a test of your faith?"</div><div> I drew back in horror.</div><div> "No, I could not do it," I cried, moving away.</div><div> "Are you prepared and willing to burn the League's archives immediately at our command, as our Speaker burns a portion of them now before your eyes?"</div><div> The Speaker stepped forward, plunging his hands into the well-arranged filing-cabinets, drew out both hands full of papers, many hundreds of papers, and to my horror burnt them over a coal-pan.</div><div> "No," I said, drawing back, "I could not do that either."</div><div> "Cave, frater," cried the President. "Take heed, impetuous brother! I have begun with the easiest tasks which require the smallest amount of faith. Each succeeding task will be increasingly difficult. Answer me: are you prepared and willing to consult our archives about yourself?"</div><div> I went cold and held my breath, but I had understood. Each question would become more and more difficult; there was no escape except into what was still worse. Breathing deeply, I stood up and said yes.</div><div> The Speaker led me to the tables where the hundreds of filing-cabinets stood. I looked for and found the letter H. I found my name and, indeed, first of all that of my ancestor, Eoban, who, four hundred years ago, had also been a member of the League. Then there was my own name, with the comment:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> Chattorum r. gest. XC.</div><div> civ. Calv. infid. 49.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> The sheet shook in my hand. Meanwhile, the officials rose from their seats one after the other, held out their hands to me, looked me straight in the face, then went away. The High Throne was vacated and, last of all, the President descended the throne, held out his hand to me, looked me in the face, smiled his pious, kind bishop's smile and left the hall last of all. I remained there alone, the note in my hand to refer to the archives for information.</div><div> I could not immediately bring myself to take the step of consulting the archives about myself. I stood hesitating in the empty hall and saw extending for a long way the boxes, cupboards, pigeon-holes and cabinets, the accumulation of all the worth-while knowledge to which I could ever gain access. Yet as much from fear of seeing my own record sheet as from a burning desire for knowledge, I allowed my own affairs to wait a little in order to learn first about one thing and another which was important to me and my story of the Journey to the East. To be sure, I had long really known that my story had already been condemned and disposed of and that I should never finish writing it. Just the same, I was curious.</div><div> I noticed a badly-filed memorandum projecting from amongst the others in one of the filings-cabinets. I went towards it and drew out the memorandum on which was written:</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> Morbio Inferiore.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div> No other catch-word could have expressed the extent of my curiosity more briefly and accurately. With my heart beating quickly, I looked up the place in the archives. It was a section of the archives which contained a rather large number of papers. On the top lay a copy of a description of the Morbio Gorge taken from an old Italian book, then there was a quarto sheet with short notes on the part which Morbio had played in the history of the League. All the notes referred to the Journey to the East and indeed to the base and group to which I had belonged. Our group, it was recorded here, had arrived at Morbio on its journey. There it was submitted to a test which it did not pass, namely, the disappearance of Leo. Although the League's rules should have guided us, and although even in the event of a League group remaining without a leader, the precepts held good and had been inculcated in us at the beginning of the journey, yet from the moment our whole group discovered the disappearance of Leo it had lost its head and faith, had entertained doubts and entered into futile arguments. In the end, the whole group, contrary to the spirit of the League, had broken up into factions and disbanded. This explanation of the disaster of Morbio could no longer surprise me much. On the other hand, I was extremely surprised at what I read further on about the breaking-up of our group, namely, that no less than three of our League brothers had made an attempt to write an account of our journey and had given a description of the events at Morbio. I was one of these three and a fair copy of my manuscript was included in the section. I read through the two others with the strangest feelings. Basically, both writers described the events of that day not very differently from the way I had done, and yet how different they seemed to me! I read in one of them:</div><div> "It was the absence of the servant Leo which revealed to us, suddenly and terribly, the extent of the dissention and the perplexities which shattered our hitherto apparent complete unity. A few of us, to be sure, immediately knew or suspected that Leo had neither come to any harm nor run away, but that he had secretly been recalled by the League's officials. Yet not one of us can contemplate without feelings of deepest repentance and shame how badly we underwent this test. Hardly had Leo left us, when faith and concord amongst us was at an end; it was as if the life-blood of our group flowed away from an invisible wound. First there were differences of opinion, then open quarrels about the most futile and ridiculous questions. For example, I remember that our very popular and praiseworthy choirmaster H.H. suddenly maintained that the missing Leo had also taken in his bag, along with other valuable objects, the ancient sacred document, the original manuscript of the Master. This statement was heatedly disputed for days. Treated symbolically, H.'s absurd assertion was really remarkably significant; indeed, it did seem as if the prosperity of the League, the cohesion of the whole, was completely gone with Leo's departure from our little group. The very same musician H. was a sad example of this. Until the day of Morbio Inferiore he was one of the most loyal and faithful League brothers, as well as popular as an artist, and, despite many weaknesses of character, he was one of our most active members. But he relapsed into brooding, depression and mistrust, became more than negligent in his duties, and began to be intolerant, nervous and quarrelsome. As he finally remained behind on the march one day and did not appear again, it did not to anyone to stop on his behalf and look for him; it was evidently a case of desertion. Unfortunately, he was not the only one, and finally nothing was left of our little traveling group. . ."</div><div> I found this passage in the other historian's work:</div><div> "Just as ancient Rome collapsed after Caesar's death, or democratic thought throughout the world on Wilson's desertion of the colors, so did our League break up on the unhappy day of Morbio. As far as blame and responsibility can be mentioned, two apparently harmless members were to blame for the collapse, the musician H.H. and Leo, one of the servants. These two men were previously popular and faithful members of the League, although lacking in understanding of its significance in world history. They disappeared one day without leaving any trace, taking with them many valuable possessions and important documents, which indicates that both wretches were bribed by enemies of the League. . ."</div><div> If the memory of this historian was so very confused and inaccurate, although he apparently made the report in all good faith and with the conviction of its complete veracity-what was the value of my own notes? If ten other accounts by other authors were found about Morbio, Leo and myself, they would presumably all contradict and censure each other. No, our historical efforts were of no use; there was no point in continuing with them and reading them; one could quietly let them be covered with dust in this section of the archives.</div><div> A shudder went through me at the thought of what I should still learn in this hour. How awry, altered and distorted everything and everyone was in these mirrors, how mockingly and unattainably did the face of truth hide itself behind all these reports, counter-reports and legends! What was still truth? What was still credible ? And what would remain when I also learned about myself, about my own character and history from the knowledge stored in these archives?</div><div> I must be prepared for anything. Suddenly I could bear the uncertainty and suspense no longer. I hastened to the section Chattorum res gestae, looked for my sub-division and number and stood in front of the part marked with my name. This was a niche, and when I drew the thin curtains aside I saw that it contained nothing written. It contained nothing but a figure, an old and worn-looking model made from wood or wax, in pale colors. It appeared to be a kind of deity or barbaric idol. At first glance it was entirely incomprehensible to me. It was a figure that really consisted of two; it had a common back. I stared at it for a while, disappointed and surprised. Then I noticed a candle in a metal candlestick fixed to the wall of the niche. A match-box lay there. I lit the candle and the strange double figure was now brightly illuminated.</div><div> Only slowly did it dawn upon me. Only slowly and gradually did I begin to suspect and then perceive what it was intended to represent. It represented a figure which was myself, and this likeness of myself was unpleasantly weak and half-real; it had blurred features, and in its whole expression there was something unstable, weak, dying or wishing to die, and looked rather like a piece of sculpture which could be called "Transitoriness" or "Decay," or something similar. On the other hand, the other figure which was joined to mine to make one, was strong in color and form, and just as I began to realize whom it resembled, namely, the servant and President Leo, I discovered a second candle in the wall and lit this also. I now saw the double figure representing Leo and myself, not only becoming clearer and each image more alike, but I also saw that the surface of the figures was transparent and that one could look inside as one can look through the glass of a bottle or vase. Inside the figures I saw something moving, slowly, extremely slowly, in the same way that a snake moves which has fallen asleep. Something was taking place there, something like a very slow, smooth but continuous flowing or melting; indeed, something melted or poured across from my image to that of Leo's. I perceived that my image was in the process of adding to and flowing into Leo's, nourishing and strengthening it. It seemed that, in time, all the substance from one image would flow into the other and only one would remain: Leo. He must grow, I must disappear.</div><div> As I stood there and looked and tried to understand what I saw, I recalled a short conversation that I had once had with Leo during the festive days at Bremgarten. We had talked about the creations of poetry being more vivid and real than the poets themselves.</div><div> The candles burned low and went out. I was overcome by an infinite weariness and desire to sleep, and I turned away to find a place where I could lie down and sleep.</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-51603672342948671852009-05-27T06:43:00.000-07:002009-05-27T06:44:31.669-07:00Breakfast at Tiffany's<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Truman Capote<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a tram. The walls were stucco, and a color rather like tobacco-spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman ruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It never occurred to me in those days to write about Holly Golightly, and probably it would not now except for a conversation I had with Joe Bell that set the whole memory of her in motion again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly Golightly had been a tenant in the old brownstone; she'd occupied the apartment below mine. As for Joe Bell, he ran a bar around the corner on Lexington Avenue; he still does. Both Holly and I used to go there six, seven times a day, not for a drink, not always, but to make telephone calls: during the war a private telephone was hard to come by. Moreover, Joe Bell was good about taking messages, which in Holly's case was no small favor, for she had a tremendous many.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course this was a long time ago, and until last week I hadn't seen Joe Bell in several years. Off and on we'd kept in touch, and occasionally I'd stopped by his bar when passing through the neighborhood; but actually we'd never been strong friends except in as much as we were both friends of Holly Golightly. Joe Bell hasn't an easy nature, he admits it himself, he says it's because he's a bachelor and has a sour stomach. Anyone who knows him will tell you he's a hard man to talk to. Impossible if you don't share his fixations, of which Holly is one. Some others are: ice hockey, Weimaraner dogs, Our Gal Sunday (a soap serial he has listened to for fifteen years), and Gilbert and Sullivan -- he claims to be related to one or the other, I can't remember which.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And so when, late last Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang and I heard "Joe Bell here," I knew it must be about Holly. He didn't say so, just: "Can you rattle right over here? It's important," and there was a croak of excitement in his froggy voice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I took a taxi in a downpour of October rain, and on my way I even thought she might be there, that I would see Holly again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But there was no one on the premises except the proprietor. Joe Bell's is a quiet place compared to most Lexington Avenue bars. It boasts neither neon nor television. Two old mirrors reflect the weather from the streets; and behind the bar, in a niche surrounded by photographs of ice-hockey stars, there is always a large bowl of fresh flowers that Joe Bell himself arranges with matronly care. That is what he was doing when I came in.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Naturally," he said, rooting a gladiola deep into the bowl, "naturally I wouldn't have got you over here if it wasn't I wanted your opinion. It's peculiar. A very peculiar thing has happened."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You heard from Holly?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He fingered a leaf, as though uncertain of how to answer. A small man with a fine head of coarse white hair, he has a bony, sloping face better suited to someone far taller; his complexion seems permanently sunburned: now it grew even redder. "I can't say exactly heard from her. I mean, I don't know. That's why I want your opinion. Let me build you a drink. Something new. They call it a White Angel," he said, mixing one-half vodka, one-half gin, no vermouth. While I drank the result, Joe Bell stood sucking on a Tums and turning over in his mind what he had to tell me. Then: "You recall a certain Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi? A gentleman from Japan."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"From California," I said, recalling Mr. Yunioshi perfectly. He's a photographer on one of the picture magazines, and when I knew him he lived in the studio apartment on the top floor of the brownstone.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Don't go mixing me up. All I'm asking, you know who I mean? Okay. So last night who comes waltzing in here but this selfsame Mr. I. Y. Yunioshi. I haven't seen him, I guess it's over two years. And where do you think he's been those two years?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Africa."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joe Bell stopped crunching on his Tums, his eyes narrowed. "So how did you know?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Read it in Winchell." Which I had, as a matter of fact.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He rang open his cash register, and produced a manila envelope. "Well, see did you read this in Winchell."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the envelope were three photographs, more or less the same, though taken from different angles: a tall delicate Negro man wearing a calico skirt and with a shy, yet vain smile, displaying in his hands an odd wood sculpture, an elongated carving of a head, a girl's, her hair sleek and short as a young man's, her smooth wood eyes too large and tilted in the tapering face, her mouth wide, overdrawn, not unlike clown-lips. On a glance it resembled most primitive carving; and then it didn't, for here was the spit-image of Holly Golightly, at least as much of a likeness as a dark still thing could be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Now what do you make of that?" said Joe Bell, satisfied with my puzzlement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It looks like her."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Listen, boy," and he slapped his hand on the bar, "it is her. Sure as I'm a man fit to wear britches. The little Jap knew it was her the minute he saw her."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He saw her? In Africa?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well. Just the statue there. But it comes to the same thing. Read the facts for yourself," he said, turning over one of the photographs. On the reverse was written: Wood Carving, S Tribe, Tococul, East Anglia, Christmas Day, 1956.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said, "Here's what the Jap says," and the story was this: On Christmas day Mr. Yunioshi had passed with his camera through Tococul, a village in the tangles of nowhere and of no interest, merely a congregation of mud huts with monkeys in the yards and buzzards on the roofs. He'd decided to move on when he saw suddenly a Negro squatting in a doorway carving monkeys on a walking stick. Mr. Yunioshi was impressed and asked to see more of his work. Whereupon he was shown the carving of the girl's head: and felt, so he told Joe Bell, as if he were falling in a dream. But when he offered to buy it the Negro cupped his private parts in his hand (apparently a tender gesture, comparable to tapping one's heart) and said no. A pound of salt and ten dollars, a wristwatch and two pounds of salt and twenty dollars, nothing swayed him. Mr. Yunioshi was in all events determined to learn how the carving came to be made. It cost him his salt and his watch, and the incident was conveyed in African and pig-English and finger-talk. But it would seem that in the spring of that year a party of three white persons had appeared out of the brush riding horseback. A young woman and two men. The men, both red-eyed with fever, were forced for several weeks to stay shut and shivering in an isolated hut, while the young woman, having presently taken a fancy to the wood-carver, shared the woodcarver's mat.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't credit that part," Joe Bell said squeamishly. "I know she had her ways, but I don't think she'd be up to anything as much as that."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And then?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Then nothing," he shrugged. "By and by she went like she come, rode away on a horse."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Alone, or with the two men?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joe Bell blinked. "With the two men, I guess. Now the Jap, he asked about her up and down the country. But nobody else had ever seen her." Then it was as if he could feel my own sense of letdown transmitting itself to him, and he wanted no part of it. "One thing you got to admit, it's the only definite news in I don't know how many" -- he counted on his fingers: there weren't enough -- "years. All I hope, I hope she's rich. She must be rich. You got to be rich to go mucking around in Africa."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"She's probably never set foot in Africa," I said, believing it; yet I could see her there, it was somewhere she would have gone. And the carved head: I looked at the photographs again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You know so much, where is she?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down and maybe right in this very city."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He considered a moment. "No," he said, and shook his head. "I'll tell you why. If she was in this city I'd have seen her. You take a man that likes to walk, a man like me, a man's been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years he's got his eye out for one person, and nobody's ever her, don't it stand to reason she's not there? I see pieces of her all the time, a flat little bottom, any skinny girl that walks fast and straight -- " He paused, as though too aware of how intently I was looking at him. "You think I'm round the bend?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's just that I didn't know you'd been in love with her. Not like that."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was sorry I'd said it; it disconcerted him. He scooped up the photographs and put them back in their envelope. I looked at my watch. I hadn't any place to go, but I thought it was better to leave.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Hold on," he said, gripping my wrist. "Sure I loved her. But it wasn't that I wanted to touch her." And he added, without smiling: "Not that I don't think about that side of things. Even at my age, and I'll be sixty-seven January ten. It's a peculiar fact -- but, the older I grow, that side of things seems to be on my mind more and more. I don't remember thinking about it so much even when I was a youngster and it's every other minute. Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that's why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden. Whenever I read in the paper about an old man disgracing himself, I know it's because of this burden. But" -- he poured himself a jigger of whiskey and swallowed it neat -- "I'll never disgrace myself. And I swear, it never crossed my mind about Holly. You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two men came into the bar, and it seemed the moment to leave. Joe Bell followed me to the door. He caught my wrist again. "Do you believe it?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That you didn't want to touch her?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I mean about Africa."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">At that moment I couldn't seem to remember the story, only the image of her riding away on a horse. "Anyway, she's gone."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yeah," he said, opening the door. "Just gone."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Outside, the rain had stopped, there was only a mist of it in the air, so I turned the corner and walked along the street where the brownstone stands. It is a street with trees that in the summer make cool patterns on the pavement; but now the leaves were yellowed and mostly down, and the rain had made them slippery, they skidded underfoot. The brownstone is midway in the block, next to a church where a blue tower-clock tolls the hours. It has been sleeked up since my day; a smart black door has replaced the old frosted glass, and gray elegant shutters frame the windows. No one I remember still lives there except Madame Sapphia Spanella, a husky coloratura who every afternoon went roller-skating in Central Park. I know she's still there because I went up the steps and looked at the mailboxes. It was one of these mailboxes that had first made me aware of Holly Golightly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'd been living in the house about a week when I noticed that the mailbox belonging to Apt. 2 had a name-slot fitted with a curious card. Printed, rather Cartier-formal, it read: Miss Holiday Golightly; and, underneath, in the corner, Traveling. It nagged me like a tune: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">One night, it was long past twelve, I woke up at the sound of Mr. Yunioshi calling down the stairs. Since he lived on the top floor, his voice fell through the whole house, exasperated and stern. "Miss Golightly! I must protest!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The voice that came back, welling up from the bottom of the stairs, was silly-young and self-amused. "Oh, darling, I am sorry. I lost the goddamn key."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You cannot go on ringing my bell. You must please, please have yourself a key made."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But I lose them all."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I work, I have to sleep," Mr. Yunioshi shouted. "But always you are ringing my bell…"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, don't be angry, you dear little man: I won't do it again. And if you promise not to be angry" -- her voice was coming nearer, she was climbing the stairs -- "I might let you take those pictures we mentioned."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">By now I'd left my bed and opened the door an inch. I could hear Mr. Yunioshi's silence: hear, because it was accompanied by an audible change of breath.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When?" he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The girl laughed. "Sometime," she answered, slurring the word.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Any time," he said, and closed his door.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I went out into the hall and leaned over the banister, just enough to see without being seen. She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag colors of her boy's hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blond and yellow, caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She was not alone. There was a man following behind her. The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically. He was short and vast, sun-lamped and pomaded, a man in a buttressed pin-stripe suit with a red carnation withering in the lapel. When they reached her door she rummaged her purse in search of a key, and took no notice of the fact that his thick lips were nuzzling the nape of her neck. At last, though, finding the key and opening her door, she turned to him cordially: "Bless you, darling -- you were sweet to see me home."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Hey, baby!" he said, for the door was closing in his face.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes, Harry?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Harry was the other guy. I'm Sid. Sid Arbuck. You like me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I worship you, Mr. Arbuck. But good night, Mr. Arbuck."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Arbuck stared with disbelief as the door shut firmly. "Hey, baby, let me in baby. You like me baby.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm a liked guy. Didn't I pick up the check, five people, your friends, I never seen them before? Don't that give me the right you should like me? You like me, baby."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He tapped on the door gently, then louder; finally he took several steps back, his body hunched and lowering, as though he meant to charge it, crash it down. Instead, he plunged down the stairs, slamming a fist against the wall. Just as he reached the bottom, the door of the girl's apartment opened and she poked out her head.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, Mr. Arbuck ... "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He turned back, a smile of relief oiling his face: she'd only been teasing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The next time a girl wants a little powder-room change," she called, not teasing at all, "take my advice, darling: don't give her twenty-cents!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">She kept her promise to Mr. Yunioshi; or I assume she did not ring his bell again, for in the next days she started ringing mine, sometimes at two in the morning, three and four: she had no qualms at what hour she got me out of bed to push the buzzer that released the downstairs door. As I had few friends, and none who would come around so late, I always knew that it was her. But on the first occasions of its happening, I went to my door, half-expecting bad news, a telegram; and Miss Golightly would call up: "Sorry, darling -- I forgot my key."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course we'd never met. Though actually, on the stairs, in the street, we often came face-to-face; but she seemed not quite to see me. She was never without dark glasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her, herself, shine so. One might have thought her a photographer's model, perhaps a young actress, except that it was obvious, judging from her hours, she hadn't time to be either.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now and then I ran across her outside our neighborhood. Once a visiting relative took me to "21," and there, at a superior table, surrounded by four men, none of them Mr. Arbuck, yet all of them interchangeable with him, was Miss Golightly, idly, publicly combing her hair; and her expression, an unrealized yawn, put, by example, a dampener, on the excitement I felt over dining at so swanky a place. Another night, deep in the summer, the heat of my room sent me out into the streets. I walked down Third Avenue to Fifty-first Street, where there was an antique store with an object in its window I admired: a palace of a bird cage, a mosque of minarets and bamboo rooms yearning to be filled with talkative parrots. But the price was three hundred and fifty dollars. On the way home I noticed a cab-driver crowd gathered in front of P. J. Clark's saloon, apparently attracted there by a happy group of whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning, "Waltzing Matilda." As they sang they took turns spin-dancing a girl over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, Miss Golightly, to be sure, floated round in their, arms light as a scarf.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and melba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were always torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also, she had a cat and she played the guitar. On days when the sun was strong, she would wash her hair, and together with the cat, a red tiger-striped tom, sit out on the fire escape thumbing a guitar while her hair dried. Whenever I heard the music, I would go stand quietly by my window. She played very well, and sometimes sang too. Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boy's adolescent voice. She knew all the show hits, Cole Porter and Kurt Weill; especially she liked the songs from Oklahoma!, which were new that summer and everywhere. But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pineywoods or prairie. One went: Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair had dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But our acquaintance did not make headway until September, an evening with the first ripple-chills of autumn running through it. I'd been to a movie, come home and gone to bed with a bourbon nightcap and the newest Simenon: so much my idea of comfort that I couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hear my heart beating. It was a feeling I'd read about, written about, but never before experienced. The feeling of being watched. Of someone in the room. Then: an abrupt rapping at the window, a glimpse of ghostly gray: I spilled the bourbon. It was some little while before I could bring myself to open the window, and ask Miss Golightly what she wanted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I've got the most terrifying man downstairs," she said, stepping off the fire escape into the room. "I mean he's sweet when he isn't drunk, but let him start lapping up the vino, and oh God quel beast! If there's one thing I loathe, it's men who bite." She loosened a gray flannel robe off her shoulder, to show me evidence of what happens if a man bites. The robe was all she was wearing. "I'm sorry if I frightened you. But when the beast got so tiresome I just went out the window. I think he thinks I'm in the bathroom, not that I give a damn what he thinks, the hell with him, he'll get tired, he'll go to sleep, my God he should, eight martinis before dinner and enough wine to wash an elephant. Listen, you can throw me out if you want to. I've got a gall barging in on you like this. But that fire escape was damned icy. And you looked so cozy. Like my brother Fred. We used to sleep four in a bed, and he was the only one that ever let me hug him on a cold night. By the way, do you mind if I call you Fred?" She'd come completely into the room now, and she paused there, staring at me. I'd never seen her before not wearing dark glasses, and it was obvious now that they were prescription lenses, for without them her eyes had an assessing squint, like a jeweler's. They were large eyes, a little blue, a little green, dotted with bits of brown: vari-colored, like her hair; and, like her hair, they gave out a lively warm light. "I suppose you think I'm very brazen. Or très fou. Or something."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not at all."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She seemed disappointed. "Yes, you do. Everybody does. I don't mind. It's useful."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She sat down on one of the rickety red-velvet chairs, curved her legs underneath her, and glanced round the room, her eyes puckering more pronouncedly. "How can you bear it? It's a chamber of horrors."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, you get used to anything," I said, annoyed with myself, for actually I was proud of the place.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't. I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead." Her dispraising eyes surveyed the room again. "What do you do here all day?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I motioned toward a table tall with books and paper. "Write things."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I thought writers were quite old. Of course Saroyan isn't old. I met him at a party, and really he isn't old at all. In fact," she mused, "if he'd give himself a closer shave ... by the way, is Hemingway old?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"In his forties, I should think."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's not bad. I can't get excited by a man until he's forty-two. I know this idiot girl who keeps telling me I ought to go to a head-shrinker; she says I have a father complex. Which is so much merde. I simply trained myself to like older men, and it was the smartest thing I ever did. How old is W. Somerset Maugham?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm not sure. Sixty-something."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's not bad. I've never been to bed with a writer. No, wait: do you know Benny Shacklett?" She frowned when I shook my head. "That's funny. He's written an awful lot of radio stuff. But quel rat. Tell me, are you a real writer?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It depends on what you mean by real."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, darling, does anyone buy what you write?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not yet."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm going to help you," she said. "I can, too. Think of all the people I know who know people. I'm going to help you because you look like my brother Fred. Only smaller. I haven't seen him since I was fourteen, that's when I left home, and he was already six-feet-two. My other brothers were more your size, runts. It was the peanut butter that made Fred so tall. Everybody thought it was dotty, the way he gorged himself on peanut butter; he didn't care about anything in this world except horses and peanut butter. But he wasn't dotty, just sweet and vague and terribly slow; he'd been in the eighth grade three years when I ran away. Poor Fred. I wonder if the Army's generous with their peanut butter. Which reminds me, I'm starving."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I pointed to a bowl of apples, at the same time asked her how and why she'd left home so young. She looked at me blankly, and rubbed her nose, as though it tickled: a gesture, seeing often repeated, I came to recognize as a signal that one was trespassing. Like many people with a bold fondness for volunteering intimate information, anything that suggested a direct question, a pinning-down, put her on guard. She took a bite of apple, and said: "Tell me something you've written. The story part."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's one of the troubles. They're not the kind of stories you can tell."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Too dirty?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Maybe I'll let you read one sometime."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Whiskey and apples go together. Fix me a drink, darling. Then you can read me a story yourself."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to read aloud. I made us both a drink and, settling in a chair opposite, began to read to her, my voice a little shaky with a combination of stage fright and enthusiasm: it was a new story, I'd finished it the day before, and that inevitable sense of shortcoming had not had time to develop. It was about two women who share a house, schoolteachers, one of whom, when the other becomes engaged, spreads with anonymous notes a scandal that prevents the marriage. As I read, each glimpse I stole of Holly made my heart contract. She fidgeted. She picked apart the butts in an ashtray, she mooned over her fingernails, as though longing for a file; worse, when I did seem to have her interest, there was actually a telltale frost over her eyes, as if she were wondering whether to buy a pair of shoes she'd seen in some window.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Is that the end?" she asked, waking up. She floundered for something more to say. "Of course I like dykes themselves. They don't scare me a bit. But stories about dykes bore the bejesus out of me. I just can't put myself in their shoes. Well really, darling," she said, because I was clearly puzzled, "if it's not about a couple of old bull-dykes, what the hell is it about?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But I was in no mood to compound the mistake of having read the story with the further embarrassment of explaining it. The same vanity that had led to such exposure, now forced me to mark her down as an insensitive, mindless show-off.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Incidentally," she said, "do you happen to know any nice lesbians? I'm looking for a roommate. Well, don't laugh. I'm so disorganized, I simply can't afford a maid; and really, dykes are wonderful home-makers, they love to do all the work, you never have to bother about brooms and defrosting and sending out the laundry. I had a roommate in Hollywood, she played in Westerns, they called her the Lone Ranger; but I'll say this for her, she was better than a man around the house. Of course people couldn't help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on. Look at the Lone Ranger, married twice. Usually dykes only get married once, just for the name. It seems to carry such cachet later on to be called Mrs. Something Another. That's not true!" She was staring at an alarm clock on the table. "It can't be four-thirty!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The window was turning blue. A sunrise breeze bandied the curtains.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What is today?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Thursday."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Thursday." She stood up. "My God," she said, and sat down again with a moan. "It's too gruesome."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was tired enough not to be curious. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. Still it was irresistible: "What's gruesome about Thursday?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Nothing. Except that I can never remember when it's coming. You see, on Thursdays I have to catch the eight forty-five. They're so particular about visiting hours, so if you're there by ten that gives you an hour before the poor men eat lunch. Think of it, lunch at eleven. You can go at two, and I'd so much rather, but he likes me to come in the morning, he says it sets him up for the rest of the day. I've got to stay awake," she said, pinching her cheeks until the roses came, "there isn't time to sleep, I'd look consumptive, I'd sag like a tenement, and that wouldn't be fair: a girl can't go to Sing Sing with a green face."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I suppose not." The anger I felt at her over my story was ebbing; she absorbed me again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"All the visitors do make an effort to look their best, and it's very tender, it's sweet as hell, the way the women wear their prettiest everything, I mean the old ones and the really poor ones too, they make the dearest effort to look nice and smell nice too, and I love them for it. I love the kids too, especially the colored ones. I mean the kids the wives bring. It should be sad, seeing the kids there, but it isn't, they have ribbons in their hair and lots of shine on their shoes, you'd think there was going to be ice cream; and sometimes that's what it's like in the visitors' room, a party. Anyway it's not like the movies: you know, grim whisperings through a grille. There isn't any grille, just a counter between you and them, and the kids can stand on it to be hugged; all you have to do to kiss somebody is lean across. What I like most, they're so happy to see each other, they've saved up so much to talk about, it isn't possible to be dull, they keep laughing and holding hands. It's different afterwards," she said. "I see them on the train. They sit so quiet watching the river go by." She stretched a strand of hair to the corner of her mouth and nibbled it thoughtfully. "I'm keeping you awake. Go to sleep."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Please. I'm interested."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I know you are. That's why I want you to go to sleep. Because if I keep on, I'll tell you about Sally. I'm not sure that would be quite cricket." She chewed her hair silently. "They never told me not to tell anyone. In so many words. And it is funny. Maybe you could put it in a story with different names and whatnot. Listen, Fred," she said, reaching for another apple, "you've got to cross your heart and kiss your elbow -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps contortionists can kiss their elbow; she had to accept an approximation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well," she said, with a mouthful of apple, "you may have read about him in the papers. His name is Sally Tomato, and I speak Yiddish better than he speaks English; but he's a darling old man, terribly pious. He'd look like a monk if it weren't for the gold teeth; he says he prays for me every night. Of course he was never my lover; as far as that goes, I never knew him until he was already in jail. But I adore him now, after all I've been going to see him every Thursday for seven months, and I think I'd go even if he didn't pay me. This one's mushy," she said, and aimed the rest of the apple out the window. "By the way, I did know Sally by sight. He used to come to Joe Bell's bar, the one around the corner: never talked to anybody, just stand there, like the kind of man who lives in hotel rooms. But it's funny to remember back and realize how closely he must have been watching me, because right after they sent him up (Joe Bell showed me his picture in the paper. Blackhand. Mafia. All that mumbo jumbo: but they gave him five years) along came this telegram from a lawyer. It said to contact him immediately for information to my advantage."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You thought somebody had left you a million?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not at all. I figured Bergdorf was trying to collect. But I took the gamble and went to see this lawyer (if he is a lawyer, which I doubt, since he doesn't seem to have an office, just an answering service, and he always wants to meet you in Hamburg Heaven: that's because he's fat, he can eat ten hamburgers and two bowls of relish and a whole lemon meringue pie). He asked me how I'd like to cheer up a lonely old man, at the same time pick up a hundred a week. I told him look, darling, you've got the wrong Miss Golightly, I'm not a nurse that does tricks on the side. I wasn't impressed by the honorarium either; you can do as well as that on trips to the powder room: any gent with the slightest chic will give you fifty for the girl's john, and I always ask for cab fare too, that's another fifty. But then he told me his client was Sally Tomato. He said dear old Sally had long admired me à la distance, so wouldn't it be a good deed if I went to visit him once a week. Well, I couldn't: it was too romantic."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't know. It doesn't sound right."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She smiled. "You think I'm lying?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"For one thing, they can't simply let anyone visit a prisoner."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, they don't. In fact they make quite a boring fuss. I'm supposed to be his niece."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And it's as simple as that? For an hour's conversation he gives you a hundred dollars?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He doesn't, the lawyer does. Mr. O'Shaughnessy mails it to me in cash as soon as I leave the weather report."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I think you could get into a lot of trouble," I said, and switched off a lamp; there was no need of it now, morning was in the room and pigeons were gargling on the fire escape.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How?" she said seriously.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There must be something in the law books about false identity. After all, you're not his niece. And what about this weather report?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She patted a yawn. "But it's nothing. Just messages I leave with the answering service so Mr. O'Shaughnessy will know for sure that I've been up there. Sally tells me what to say, things like, oh, 'there's a hurricane in Cuba' and 'it's snowing in Palermo.' Don't worry, darling," she said, moving to the bed, "I've taken care of myself a long time." The morning light seemed refracted through her: as she pulled the bed covers up to my chin she gleamed like a transparent child; then she lay down beside me. "Do you mind? I only want to rest a moment. So let's don't say another word. Go to sleep."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I pretended to, I made my breathing heavy and regular. Bells in the tower of the next-door church rang the half-hour, the hour. It was six when she put her hand on my arm, a fragile touch careful not to waken. "Poor Fred," she whispered, and it seemed she was speaking to me, but she was not. "Where are you, Fred? Because it's cold. There's snow in the wind." Her cheek came to rest against my shoulder, a warm damp weight.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why are you crying?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She sprang back, sat up. "Oh, for God's sake," she said, starting for the window and the fire escape, "I hate snoops."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The next day, Friday, I came home to find outside my door a grand-luxe Charles & Co. basket with her card: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling: and scribbled on the back in a freakishly awkward, kindergarten hand: Bless you darling Fred. Please forgive the other night. You were an angel about the whole thing. Mille tendresse -- Holly. P.S. I won't bother you again. I replied, Please do, and left this note at her door with what I could afford, a bunch of street-vendor violets. But apparently she'd meant what she said; I neither saw nor heard from her, and I gathered she'd gone so far as to obtain a downstairs key. At any rate she no longer rang my bell. I missed that; and as the days merged I began to feel toward her certain far-fetched resentments, as if I were being neglected by my closest friend. A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but it induced no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now like a salt-free, sugarless diet. By Wednesday thoughts of Holly, of Sing Sing and Sally Tomato, of worlds where men forked over fifty dollars for the powder room, were so constant that I couldn't work. That night I left a message in her mailbox: Tomorrow is Thursday. The next morning rewarded me with a second note in the play-pen script: Bless you for reminding me. Can you stop for a drink tonight 6-ish?</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I waited until ten past six, then made myself delay five minutes more.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A creature answered the door. He smelled of cigars and Knize cologne. His shoes sported elevated heels; without these added inches, one might have taken him for a Little Person. His bald freckled head was dwarf-big: attached to it were a pair of pointed, truly elfin ears. He had Pekingese eyes, unpitying and slightly bulged. Tufts of hair sprouted from his ears, from his nose; his jowls were gray with afternoon beard, and his handshake almost furry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Kid's in the shower," he said, motioning a cigar toward a sound of water hissing in another room. The room in which we stood (we were standing because there was nothing to sit on) seemed as though it were being just moved into; you expected to smell wet paint. Suitcases and unpacked crates were the only furniture. The crates served as tables. One supported the mixings of a martini; another a lamp, a Libertyphone, Holly's red cat and a bowl of yellow roses. Bookcases, covering one wall, boasted a half-shelf of literature. I warmed to the room at once, I liked its fly-by-night look.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The man cleared his throat. "You expected?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He found my nod uncertain. His cold eyes operated on me, made neat, exploratory incisions. "A lot of characters come here, they're not expected. You know the kid long?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not very."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"So you don't know the kid long?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I live upstairs."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The answer seemed to explain enough to relax him. "You got the same layout?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Much smaller."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He tapped ash on the floor. "This is a dump. This is unbelievable. But the kid don't know how to live even when she's got the dough." His speech had a jerky metallic rhythm, like a teletype. "So," he said, "what do you think: is she or ain't she?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Ain't she what?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"A phony."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I wouldn't have thought so."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You're wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you're right. She isn't a phony because she's a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can't talk her out of it. I've tried with tears running down my cheeks. Benny Polan, respected everywhere, Benny Polan tried. Benny had it on his mind to marry her, she don't go for it, Benny spent maybe thousands sending her to head-shrinkers. Even the famous one, the one can only speak German, boy, did he throw in the towel. You can't talk her out of these" -- he made a fist, as though to crush an intangible -- "ideas. Try it sometime. Get her to tell you some of the stuff she believes. Mind you," he said, "I like the kid. Everybody does, but there's lots that don't. I do. I sincerely like the kid. I'm sensitive, that's why. You've got to be sensitive to appreciate her: a streak of the poet. But I'll tell you the truth. You can beat your brains out for her, and she'll hand you horseshit on a platter. To give an example -- who is she like you see her today? She's strictly a girl you'll read where she ends up at the bottom of a bottle of Seconals. I've seen it happen more times than you've got toes: and those kids, they weren't even nuts. She's nuts."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But young. And with a great deal of youth ahead of her."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If you mean future, you're wrong again. Now a couple of years back, out on the Coast, there was a time it could've been different. She had something working for her, she had them interested, she could've really rolled. But when you walk out on a thing like that, you don't walk back. Ask Luise Rainer. And Rainer was a star. Sure, Holly was no star; she never got out of the still department. But that was before The Story of Dr. Wassell. Then she could've really rolled. I know, see, cause I'm the guy was giving her the push." He pointed his cigar at himself. "O.J. Berman."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He expected recognition, and I didn't mind obliging him, it was all right by me, except I'd never heard of O.J. Berman. It developed that he was a Hollywood actor's agent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm the first one saw her. Out at Santa Anita. She's hanging around the track every day. I'm interested: professionally. I find out she's some jock's regular, she's living with the shrimp. I get the jock told Drop It if he don't want conversation with the vice boys: see, the kid's fifteen. But stylish: she's okay, she comes across. Even when she's wearing glasses this thick; even when she opens her mouth and you don't know if she's a hillbilly or an Okie or what. I still don't. My guess, nobody'll ever know where she came from. She's such a goddamn liar, maybe she don't know herself any more. But it took us a year to smooth out that accent. How we did it finally, we gave her French lessons: after she could imitate French, it wasn't so long she could imitate English. We modeled her along the Margaret Sullavan type, but she could pitch some curves of her own, people were interested, big ones, and to top it all, Benny Polan, a respected guy, Benny wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? Then wham! The Story of Dr. Wassell. You see that picture? Cecil B. DeMille. Gary Cooper. Jesus. I kill myself, it's all set: they're going to test her for the part of Dr. Wassell's nurse. One of his nurses, anyway. Then wham! The phone rings." He picked a telephone out of the air and held it to his ear. "She says, this is Holly, I say honey, you sound far away, she says I'm in New York, I say what the hell are you doing in New York when it's Sunday and you got the test tomorrow? She says I'm in New York cause I've never been to New York. I say get your ass on a plane and get back here, she says I don't want it. I say what's your angle, doll? She says you got to want it to be good and I don't want it, I say well, what the hell do you want, and she says when I find out you'll be the first to know. See what I mean: horseshit on a platter."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The red cat jumped off its crate and rubbed against his leg. He lifted the cat on the toe of his shoe and gave him a toss, which was hateful of him except he seemed not aware of the cat but merely his own irritableness.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is what she wants?" he said, flinging out his arms. "A lot of characters they aren't expected? Living off tips. Running around with bums. So maybe she could marry Rusty Trawler? You should pin a medal on her for that?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He waited, glaring.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Sorry, I don't know him."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You don't know Rusty Trawler, you can't know much about the kid. Bad deal," he said, his tongue clucking in his huge head. "I was hoping you maybe had influence. Could level with the kid before it's too late."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But according to you, it already is."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He blew a smoke ring, let it fade before he smiled; the smile altered his face, made something gentle happen. "I could get it rolling again. Like I told you," he said, and now it sounded true, "I sincerely like the kid."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What scandals are you spreading, O.J.?" Holly splashed into the room, a towel more or less wrapped round her and her wet feet dripping footmarks on the floor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Just the usual. That you're nuts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Fred knows that already."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But you don't."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Light me a cigarette, darling," she said, snatching off a bathing cap and shaking her hair. "I don't mean you, O.J. You're such a slob. You always nigger-lip."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She scooped up the cat and swung him onto her shoulder. He perched there with the balance of a bird, his paws tangled in her hair as if it were knitting yarn; and yet, despite these amiable antics, it was a grim cat with a pirate's cutthroat face; one eye was gluey-blind, the other sparkled with dark deeds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"O.J. is a slob," she told me, taking the cigarette I'd lighted. "But he does know a terrific lot of phone numbers. What's David O. Selznick's number, O.J.?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Lay off."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's not a joke, darling. I want you to call him up and tell him what a genius Fred is. He's written barrels of the most marvelous stories. Well, don't blush, Fred: you didn't say you were a genius, I did. Come on, O.J. What are you going to do to make Fred rich?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Suppose you let me settle that with Fred."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Remember," she said, leaving us, "I'm his agent. Another thing: if I holler, come zipper me up. And if anybody knocks, let them in."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A multitude did. Within the next quarter-hour a stag party had taken over the apartment, several of them in uniform. I counted two Naval officers and an Air Force colonel; but they were outnumbered by graying arrivals beyond draft status. Except for a lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed strangers among strangers; indeed, each face, on entering, had struggled to conceal dismay at seeing others there. It was as if the hostess had distributed her invitations while zigzagging through various bars; which was probably the case. After the initial frowns, however, they mixed without grumbling, especially O.J. Berman, who avidly exploited the new company to avoid discussing my Hollywood future. I was left abandoned by the bookshelves; of the books there, more than half were about horses, the rest baseball. Pretending an interest in Horseflesh and How to Tell It gave me sufficiently private opportunity for sizing Holly's friends.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Presently one of these became prominent. He was a middle-aged child that had never shed its baby fat, though some gifted tailor had almost succeeded in camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom. There wasn't a suspicion of bone in his body; his face, a zero filled in with pretty miniature features, had an unused, a virginal quality: it was as if he'd been born, then expanded, his skin remaining unlined as a blown-up balloon, and his mouth, though ready for squalls and tantrums, a spoiled sweet puckering. But it was not appearance that singled him out; preserved infants aren't all that rare. It was, rather, his conduct; for he was behaving as though the party were his: like an energetic octopus, he was shaking martinis, making introductions, manipulating the phonograph. In fairness, most of his activities were dictated by the hostess herself: Rusty, would you mind; Rusty, would you please. If he was in love with her, then clearly he had his jealousy in check. A jealous man might have lost control, watching her as she skimmed around the room, carrying her cat in one hand but leaving the other free to straighten a tie or remove lapel lint; the Air Force colonel wore a medal that came in for quite a polish.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The man's name was Rutherfurd ("Rusty") Trawler. In 1908 he'd lost both his parents, his father the victim of an anarchist and his mother of shock, which double misfortune had made Rusty an orphan, a millionaire, and a celebrity, all at the age of five. He'd been a stand-by of the Sunday supplements ever since, a consequence that had gathered hurricane momentum when, still a schoolboy, he had caused his godfather-custodian to be arrested on charges of sodomy. After that, marriage and divorce sustained his place in the tabloid-sun. His first wife had taken herself, and her alimony, to a rival of Father Divine's. The second wife seems unaccounted for, but the third had sued him in New York State with a full satchel of the kind of testimony that entails. He himself divorced the last Mrs. Trawler, his principal complaint stating that she'd started a mutiny aboard his yacht, said mutiny resulting in his being deposited on the Dry Tortugas. Though he'd been a bachelor since, apparently before the war he'd proposed to Unity Mitford, at least he was supposed to have sent her a cable offering to marry her if Hitler didn't. This was said to be the reason Winchell always referred to him as a Nazi; that, and the fact that he attended rallies in Yorkville.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was not told these things. I read them in The Baseball Guide, another selection off Holly's shelf which she seemed to use for a scrapbook. Tucked between the pages were Sunday features, together with scissored snippings from gossip columns. Rusty Trawler and Holly Golightly two-on-the-aisle at "One Touch of Venus" preem. Holly came up from behind, and caught me reading: Miss Holiday Golightly, of the Boston Golightlys, making every day a holiday for the 24-karat Rusty Trawler.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Admiring my publicity, or are you just a baseball fan?" she said, adjusting her dark glasses as she glanced over my shoulder.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I said, "What was this week's weather report?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She winked at me, but it was humorless: a wink of warning, "I'm all for horses, but I loathe baseball," she said, and the sub-message in her, voice was saying she wished me to forget she'd ever mentioned Sally Tomato. "I hate the sound of it on a radio, but I have to listen, it's part of my research. There're so few things men can talk about. If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble anyway: he don't like girls. And how are you making out with O.J.?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We've separated by mutual agreement"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He's an opportunity, believe me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I do believe you. But what have I to offer that would strike him as an opportunity?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She persisted. "Go over there and make him think he isn't funny-looking. He really can help you, Fred."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I understand you weren't too appreciative." She seemed puzzled until I said: "The Story of Doctor Wassell"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He's still harping?" she said, and cast across the room an affectionate look at Berman. "But he's got a point, I should feel guilty. Not because they would have given me the part or because I would have been good: they wouldn't and I wouldn't. If I do feel guilty, I guess it's because I let him go on dreaming when I wasn't dreaming a bit. I was just vamping for time to make a few self-improvements: I knew damn well I'd never be a movie star. It's too hard; and if you're intelligent, it's too embarrassing. My complexes aren't inferior enough: being a movie star and having a big fat ego are supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually, it's essential not to have any ego at all. I don't mean I'd mind being rich and famous.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's very much on my schedule, and someday I'll try to get around to it; but if it happens, I'd like to have my ego tagging along. I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's. You need a glass," she said, noticing my empty hands. "Rusty! Will you bring my friend a drink?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said. "Not that I give a hoot about jewelry. Diamonds, yes. But it's tacky to wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky. They only look right on the really old girls. Maria Ouspenskaya. Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can't wait. But that's not why I'm mad about Tiffany's. Listen. You know those days when you've got the mean reds?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Same as the blues?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No," she said slowly. "No, the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don't know what it is. You've had that feeling?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Quite often. Some people call it angst."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, a drink helps."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I've tried that. I've tried aspirin, too. Rusty thinks I should smoke marijuana, and I did for a while, but it only makes me giggle. What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name. I've thought maybe after the war, Fred and I -- " She pushed up her dark glasses, and her eyes, the differing colors of them, the grays and wisps of blue and green, had taken on a far-seeing sharpness. "I went to Mexico once. It's wonderful country for raising horses. I saw one place near the sea. Fred's good with horses."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rusty Trawler came carrying a martini; he handed it over without looking at me. "I'm hungry," he announced, and his voice, retarded as the rest of him, produced an unnerving brat-whine that seemed to blame Holly. "It's seven-thirty, and I'm hungry. You know what the doctor said."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes, Rusty. I know what the doctor said."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, then break it up. Let's go."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I want you to behave, Rusty." She spoke softly, but there was a governess threat of punishment in her tone that caused an odd flush of pleasure, of gratitude, to pink his face.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You don't love me," he complained, as though they were alone.'</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Nobody loves naughtiness."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Obviously she'd said what he wanted to hear; it appeared to both excite and relax him. Still he continued, as though it were a ritual: "Do you love me?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She patted him. "Tend to your chores, Rusty. And when I'm ready, we'll go eat wherever you want."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Chinatown?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But that doesn't mean sweet and sour spareribs. You know what the doctor said."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">As he returned to his duties with a satisfied waddle, I couldn't resist reminding her that she hadn't answered his question. "Do you love him?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I told you: you can make yourself love anybody. Besides, he had a stinking childhood."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If it was so stinking, why does he cling to it?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Use your head. Can't you see it's just that Rusty feels safer in diapers than he would in a skirt? Which is really the choice, only he's awfully touchy about it. He tried to stab me with a butter knife because I told him to grow up and face the issue, settle down and play house with a nice fatherly truck driver. Meantime, I've got him on my hands; which is okay, he's harmless, he thinks girls are dolls, literally."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Thank God."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, if it were true of most men, I'd hardly be thanking God."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I meant thank God you're not going to marry Mr. Trawler."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She lifted an eyebrow. "By the way, I'm not pretending I don't know he's rich. Even land in Mexico costs something. Now," she said, motioning me forward, "let's get hold of O.J."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I held back while my mind worked to win a postponement. Then I remembered: "Why Traveling?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"On my card?" she said, disconcerted. "You think it's funny?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not funny. Just provocative."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She shrugged. "After all, how do I know where I'll be living tomorrow? So I told them to put Traveling. Anyway, it was a waste of money, ordering those cards. Except I felt I owed it to them to buy some little something. They're from Tiffany's." She reached for my martini, I hadn't touched it; she drained it in two swallows, and took my hand. "Quit stalling. You're going to make friends with O.J."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">An occurrence at the door intervened. It was a young woman, and she entered like a wind-rush, a squall of scarves and jangling gold. "H-H-Holly," she said, wagging a finger as she advanced, "you miserable h-h-hoarder. Hogging all these simply r-r-riveting m-m-men!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She was well over six feet, taller than most men there. They straightened their spines, sucked in their stomachs; there was a general contest to match her swaying height.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly said, "What are you doing here?" and her lips were taut as drawn string.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why, n-n-nothing, sugar. I've been upstairs working with Yunioshi. Christmas stuff for the Ba-ba-zaar. But you sound vexed, sugar?" She scattered a roundabout smile. "You b-b-boys not vexed at me for butting in on your p-p-party?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rusty Trawler tittered. He squeezed her arm, as though to admire her muscle, and asked her if she could use a drink.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I surely could," she said. "Make mine bourbon."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly told her, "There isn't any." Whereupon the Air Force colonel suggested he run out for a bottle.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, I declare, don't let's have a f-f-fuss. I'm happy with ammonia. Holly, honey," she said, slightly shoving her, "don't you bother about me. I can introduce myself." She stooped toward O.J. Berman, who, like many short men in the presence of tall women, had an aspiring mist in his eye. "I'm Mag W-w-wildwood, from Wild-w-w-wood, Arkansas. That's hill country."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It seemed a dance, Berman performing some fancy footwork to prevent his rivals cutting in. He lost her to a quadrille of partners who gobbled up her stammered jokes like popcorn tossed to pigeons. It was a comprehensible success. She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of plain good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly. Heels that emphasized her height, so steep her ankles trembled; a flat tight bodice that indicated she could go to a beach in bathing trunks; hair that was pulled straight back, accentuating the spareness, the starvation of her fashion-model face. Even the stutter, certainly genuine but still a bit laid on, had been turned to advantage. It was the master stroke, that stutter; for it contrived to make her banalities sound somehow original, and secondly, despite her tallness, her assurance, it served to inspire in male listeners a protective feeling. To illustrate: Berman had to be pounded on the back because she said, "Who can tell me w-w-where is the j-j-john?"; then, completing the cycle, he offered an arm to guide her himself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That," said Holly, "won't be necessary. She's been here before. She knows where it is." She was emptying ashtrays, and after Mag Wildwood had left the room, she emptied another, then said, sighed rather: "It's really very sad." She paused long enough to calculate the number of inquiring expressions; it was sufficient. "And so mysterious. You'd think it would show more. But heaven knows, she looks healthy. So, well, clean. That's the extraordinary part. Wouldn't you," she asked with concern, but of no one in particular, "wouldn't you say she looked clean?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Someone coughed, several swallowed. A Naval officer, who had been holding Mag Wildwood's drink, put it down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But then," said Holly, "I hear so many of these Southern girls have the same trouble." She shuddered delicately, and went to the kitchen for more ice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mag Wildwood couldn't understand it, the abrupt absence of warmth on her return; the conversations she began behaved like green logs, they fumed but would not fire. More unforgivably, people were leaving without taking her telephone number. The Air Force colonel decamped while her back was turned, and this was the straw too much: he'd asked her to dinner. Suddenly she was blind. And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled. She took it out on everyone. She called her hostess a Hollywood degenerate. She invited a man in his fifties to fight. She told Berman, Hitler was right. She exhilarated Rusty Trawler by stiff-arming him into a corner. "You know what's going to happen to you?" she said, with no hint of a stutter. "I'm going to march you over to the zoo and feed you to the yak." He looked altogether willing, but she disappointed him by sliding to the floor, where she sat humming.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You're a bore. Get up from there," Holly said, stretching on a pair of gloves. The remnants of the party were waiting at the door, and when the bore didn't budge Holly cast me an apologetic glance. "Be an angel, would you, Fred? Put her in a taxi. She lives at the Winslow."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Don't. Live Barbizon. Regent 4-5700. Ask for Mag Wildwood."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You are an angel, Fred."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">They were gone. The prospect of steering an Amazon into a taxi obliterated whatever resentment I felt. But she solved the problem herself. Rising on her own steam, she stared down at me with a lurching loftiness. She said, "Let's go Stork. Catch lucky balloon," and fell full-length like an axed oak. My first thought was to run for a doctor. But examination proved her pulse fine and her breathing regular. She was simply asleep. After finding a pillow for her head, I left her to enjoy it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The following afternoon I collided with Holly on the stairs. "You" she said, hurrying past with a package from the druggist. "There she is, on the verge of pneumonia. A hang-over out to here. And the mean reds on top of it." I gathered from this that Mag Wildwood was still in the apartment, but she gave me no chance to explore her surprising sympathy. Over the weekend, mystery deepened. First, there was the Latin who came to my door: mistakenly, for he was inquiring after Miss Wildwood. It took a while to correct his error, our accents seemed mutually incoherent, but by the time we had I was charmed. He'd been put together with care, his brown head and bullfighter's figure had an exactness, a perfection, like an apple, an orange, something nature has made just right. Added to this, as decoration, were an English suit and a brisk cologne and, what is still more unlatin, a bashful manner. The second event of the day involved him again. It was toward evening, and I saw him on my way out to dinner. He was arriving in a taxi; the driver helped him totter into the house with a load of suitcases. That gave me something to chew on: by Sunday my jaws were quite tired.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then the picture became both darker and clearer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sunday was an Indian summer day, the sun was strong, my window was open, and I heard voices on the fire escape. Holly and Mag were sprawled there on a blanket, the cat between them. Their hair, newly washed, hung lankly. They were busy, Holly varnishing her toenails, Mag knitting on a sweater. Mag was speaking.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If you ask me, I think you're l-l-lucky. At least there's one thing you can say for Rusty. He's an American."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Bully for him."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Sugar. There's a war on."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And when it's over, you've seen the last of me, boy."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't feel that way. I'm p-p-proud of my country. The men in my family were great soldiers. There's a statue of Papadaddy Wildwood smack in the center of Wildwood."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Fred's a soldier," said Holly. "But I doubt if he'll ever be a statue. Could be. They say the more stupid you are the braver. He's pretty stupid."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Fred's that boy upstairs? I didn't realize he was a soldier. But he does look stupid."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid. Anyhow, he's a different Fred. Fred's my brother."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You call your own f-f-flesh and b-b-blood stupid?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If he is he is."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, it's poor taste to say so. A boy that's fighting for you and me and all of us."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What is this: a bond rally?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I just want you to know where I stand. I appreciate a joke, but underneath I'm a s-s-serious person. Proud to be an American. That's why I'm sorry about José." She put down her knitting needles. "You do think he's terribly good-looking, don't you?" Holly said Hmn, and swiped the cat's whiskers with her lacquer brush. "If only I could get used to the idea of m-m-marrying a Brazilian. And being a B-b-brazilian myself. It's such a canyon to cross. Six thousand miles, and not knowing the language -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Go to Berlitz."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why on earth would they be teaching P-p-portu-guese? It isn't as though anyone spoke it. No, my only chance is to try and make José forget politics and become an American. It's such a useless thing for a man to want to be: the p-p-president of Brazil." She sighed and picked up her knitting. "I must be madly in love. You saw us together. Do you think I'm madly in love?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well. Does he bite?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mag dropped a stitch. "Bite?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You. In bed."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why, no. Should he?" Then she added, censoriously: "But he does laugh."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Good. That's the right spirit. I like a man who sees the humor; most of them, they're all pant and puff."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mag withdrew her complaint; she accepted the comment as flattery reflecting on herself. "Yes. I suppose."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Okay. He doesn't bite. He laughs. What else?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mag counted up her dropped stitch and began again, knit, purl, purl.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I said -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I heard you. And it isn't that I don't want to tell you. But it's so difficult to remember. I don't d-d-dwell on these things. The way you seem to. They go out of my head like a dream. I'm sure that's the n-n-normal attitude."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural." Holly paused in the process of reddening the rest of the cat's whiskers. "Listen. If you can't remember, try leaving the lights on."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Please understand me, Holly. I'm a very-very-very conventional person."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, balls. What's wrong with a decent look at a guy you like? Men are beautiful, a lot of them are, José is, and if you don't even want to look at him, well, I'd say he's getting a pretty cold plate of macaroni."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"L-l-lower your voice."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You can't possibly be in love with him. Now. Does that answer your question?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No. Because I'm not a cold plate of m-m-macaroni. I'm a warm-hearted person. It's the basis of my character."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Okay. You've got a warm heart. But if I were a man on my way to bed, I'd rather take along a hot-water bottle. It's more tangible."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You won't hear any squawks out of José," she said complacently, her needles flashing in the sunlight. "What's more, I am in love with him. Do you realize I've knitted ten pairs of Argyles in less than three months? And this is the second sweater." She stretched the sweater and tossed it aside. "What's the point, though? Sweaters in Brazil. I ought to be making s-s-sun helmets."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly lay back and yawned. "It must be winter sometime."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It rains, that I know. Heat. Rain. J-j-jungles."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Heat. Jungles. Actually, I'd like that."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Better you than me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes," said Holly, with a sleepiness that was not sleepy. "Better me than you."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Monday, when I went down for the morning mail, the card on Holly's box had been altered, a name added: Miss Golightly and Miss Wildwood were now traveling together. This might have held my interest longer except for a letter in my own mailbox. It was from a small university review to whom I'd sent a story. They liked it; and, though I must understand they could not afford to pay, they intended to publish. Publish: that meant print. Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase. I had to tell someone: and, taking the stairs two at a time, I pounded on Holly's door.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I didn't trust my voice to tell the news; as soon as she came to the door, her eyes squinty with sleep, I thrust the letter at her. It seemed as though she'd had time to read sixty pages before she handed it back. "I wouldn't let them do it, not if they don't pay you," she said, yawning. Perhaps my face explained she'd misconstrued, that I'd not wanted advice but congratulations: her mouth shifted from a yawn into a smile. "Oh, I see. It's wonderful. Well, come in," she said. "Well make a pot of coffee and celebrate. No. I'll get dressed and take you to lunch."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Her bedroom was consistent with her parlor: it perpetuated the same camping-out atmosphere; crates and suitcases, everything packed and ready to go, like the belongings of a criminal who feels the law not far behind. In the parlor there was no conventional furniture, but the bedroom had the bed itself, a double one at that, and quite flashy: blond wood, tufted satin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She left the door of the bathroom open, and conversed from there; between the flushing and the brushing, most of what she said was unintelligible, but the gist of it was: she supposed I knew Mag Wildwood had moved in and wasn't that convenient? because if you're going to have a roommate, and she isn't a dyke, then the next best thing is a perfect fool, which Mag was, because then you can dump the lease on them and send them out for the laundry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">One could see that Holly had a laundry problem; the room was strewn, like a girl's gymnasium.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">" -- and you know, she's quite a successful model: isn't that fantastic! But a good thing," she said, hobbling out of the bathroom as she adjusted a garter. "It ought to keep her out of my hair most of the day. And there shouldn't be too much trouble on the man front. She's engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there's a tiny difference in height: I'd say a foot, her favor. Where the hell -- " She was on her knees poking under the bed. After she'd found what she was looking for, a pair of lizard shoes, she had to search for a blouse, a belt, and it was a subject to ponder, how, from such wreckage, she evolved the eventual effect: pampered, calmly immaculate, as though she'd been attended by Cleopatra's maids. She said, "Listen," and cupped her hand under my chin, "I'm glad about the story. Really I am."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That Monday in October, 1943. A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird. To start, we had Manhattans at Joe Bell's; and, when he heard of my good luck, champagne cocktails on the house. Later, we wandered toward Fifth Avenue, where there was a parade. The flags in the wind, the thump of military bands and military feet, seemed to have nothing to do with war, but to be, rather, a fanfare arranged in my personal honor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We ate lunch at the cafeteria in the park. Afterwards, avoiding the zoo (Holly said she couldn't bear to see anything in a cage), we giggled, ran, sang along the paths toward the old wooden boathouse, now gone. Leaves floated on the lake; on the shore, a park-man was fanning a bonfire of them, and the smoke, rising like Indian signals, was the only smudge on the quivering air. Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring; which is how I felt sitting with Holly on the railings of the boathouse porch. I thought of the future, and spoke of the past. Because Holly wanted to know about my childhood. She talked of her own, too; but it was elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital, though the impression received was contrary to what one expected, for she gave an almost voluptuous account of swimming and summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties: in short, happy in a way that she was not, and never, certainly, the background of a child who had run away.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Or, I asked, wasn't it true that she'd been out on her own since she was fourteen? She rubbed her nose. "That's true. The other isn't. But really, darling, you made such a tragedy out of your childhood I didn't feel I should compete."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She hopped off the railing. "Anyway, it reminds me: I ought to send Fred some peanut butter." The rest of the afternoon we were east and west worming out of reluctant grocers cans of peanut butter, a wartime scarcity; dark came before we'd rounded up a half-dozen jars, the last at a delicatessen on Third Avenue. It was near the antique shop with the palace of a bird cage in its window, so I took her there to see it, and she enjoyed the point, its fantasy: "But still, it's a cage."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Passing a Woolworth's, she gripped my arm: "Let's steal something," she said, pulling me into the store, where at once there seemed a pressure of eyes, as though we were already under suspicion. "Come on. Don't be chicken." She scouted a counter piled with paper pumpkins and Halloween masks. The saleslady was occupied with a group of nuns who were trying on masks. Holly picked up a mask and slipped it over her face; she chose another and put it on mine; then she took my hand and we walked away. It was as simple as that. Outside, we ran a few blocks, I think to make it more dramatic; but also because, as I'd discovered, successful theft exhilarates. I wondered if she'd often stolen. "I used to," she said. "I mean I had to. If I wanted anything. But I still do it every now and then, sort of to keep my hand in." We wore the masks all the way home.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have a memory of spending many hither and yonning days with Holly; and it's true, we did at odd moments see a great deal of each other; but on the whole, the memory is false. Because toward the end of the month I found a job: what is there to add? The less the better, except to say it was necessary and lasted from nine to five. Which made our hours, Holly's and mine, extremely different. Unless it was Thursday, her Sing Sing day, or unless she'd gone horseback riding in the park, as she did occasionally, Holly was hardly up when I came home. Sometimes, stopping there, I shared her wake-up coffee while she dressed for the evening. She was forever on her way out, not always with Rusty Trawler, but usually, and usually, too, they were joined by Mag Wildwood and the handsome Brazilian, whose name was José Ybarra-Jaegar: his mother was German. As a quartet, they struck an unmusical note, primarily the fault of Ybarra-Jaegar, who seemed as out of place in their company as a violin in a jazz band. He was intelligent, he was presentable, he appeared to have a serious link with his work, which was obscurely governmental, vaguely important, and took him to Washington several days a week. How, then, could he survive night after night in La Rue, El Morocco, listening to the Wildwood ch-ch-chatter and staring into Rusty's raw baby-buttocks face? Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character. That would explain much; Holly's determination explains the rest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Late one afternoon, while waiting for a Fifth Avenue bus, I noticed a taxi stop across the street to let out a girl who ran up the steps of the Forty-second Street public library. She was through the doors before I recognized her, which was pardonable, for Holly and libraries were not an easy association to make. I let curiosity guide me between the lions, debating on the way whether I should admit following her or pretend coincidence. In the end I did neither, but concealed myself some tables away from her in the general reading room, where she sat behind her dark glasses and a fortress of literature she'd gathered at the desk. She sped from one book to the next, intermittently lingering on a page, always with a frown, as if it were printed upside down. She had a pencil poised above paper -- nothing seemed to catch her fancy, still now and then, as though for the hell of it, she made laborious scribblings. Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her stained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul -- desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left. Such profound observations made me forget where I was; I came to, startled to find myself in the gloom of the library, and surprised all over again to see Holly there. It was after seven, she was freshening her lipstick and perking up her appearance from what she deemed correct for a library to what, by adding a bit of scarf, some earrings, she considered suitable for the Colony. When she'd left, I wandered over to the table where her books remained; they were what I had wanted to see. South by Thunderbird. Byways of Brazil. The Political Mind of Latin America. And so forth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Christmas Eve she and Mag gave a party. Holly asked me to come early and help trim the tree. I'm still not sure how they maneuvered that tree into the apartment. The top branches were crushed against the ceiling, the lower ones spread wall-to-wall; altogether it was not unlike the yuletide giant we see in Rockefeller Plaza. Moreover, it would have taken a Rockefeller to decorate it, for it soaked up baubles and tinsel like melting snow. Holly suggested she run out to Woolworth's and steal some balloons; she did: and they turned the tree into a fairly good show. We made a toast to our work, and Holly said: "Look in the bedroom. There's a present for you."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I had one for her, too: a small package in my pocket that felt even smaller when I saw, square on the bed and wrapped with a red ribbon, the beautiful bird cage. "But, Holly! It's dreadful!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I couldn't agree more; but I thought you wanted it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The money! Three hundred and fifty dollars!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She shrugged. "A few extra trips to the powder room. Promise me, though. Promise you'll never put a living thing in it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I started to kiss her, but she held out her hand "Gimme," she said, tapping the bulge in my pocket.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm afraid it isn't much," and it wasn't: a St. Christopher's medal. But at least it came from Tiffany's. Holly was not a girl who could keep anything, and surely by now she has lost that medal, left it in a suitcase or some hotel drawer. But the bird cage is still mine. I've lugged it to New Orleans, Nantucket, all over Europe, Morocco, the West Indies. Yet I seldom remember that it was Holly who gave it to me, because at one point I chose to forget: we had a big falling-out, and among the objects rotating in the eye of our hurricane were the bird cage and O.J. Berman and my story, a copy of which I'd given Holly when it appeared in the university review.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sometime in February, Holly had gone on a winter trip with Rusty, Mag and José Ybarra-Jaegar. Our altercation happened soon after she returned. She was brown as iodine, her hair was sun-bleached to a ghost-color, she'd had a wonderful time: "Well, first of all we were in Key West, and Rusty got mad at some sailors, or vice versa, anyway he'll have to wear a spine brace the rest of his life. Dearest Mag ended up in the hospital, too. First-degree sunburn. Disgusting: all blisters and citronella. We couldn't stand the smell of her. So José and I left them in the hospital and went to Havana. He says wait till I see Rio; but as far as I'm concerned Havana can take my money right now. We had an irresistible guide, most of him Negro and the rest of him Chinese, and while I don't go much for one or the other, the combination was fairly riveting: so I let him play kneesie under the table, because frankly I didn't find him at all banal; but then one night he took us to a blue movie, and what do you suppose? There he was on the screen. Of course when we got back to Key West, Mag was positive I'd spent the whole time sleeping with José. So was Rusty: but he doesn't care about that, he simply wants to hear the details. Actually, things were pretty tense until I had a heart-to-heart with Mag."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We were in the front room, where, though it was now nearly March, the enormous Christmas tree, turned brown and scentless, its balloons shriveled as an old cow's dugs, still occupied most of the space. A recognizable piece of furniture had been added to the room: an army cot; and Holly, trying to preserve her tropic look, was sprawled on it under a sun lamp.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And you convinced her?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That I hadn't slept with José? God, yes. I simply told -- but you know: made it sound like an agonized confession -- simply told her I was a dyke."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"She couldn't have believed that."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The hell she didn't. Why do you think she went out and bought this army cot? Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department. Be a darling, darling, rub some oil on my back." While I was performing this service, she said: "O.J. Berman's in town, and listen, I gave him your story in the magazine. He was quite impressed. He thinks maybe you're worth helping. But he says you're on the wrong track. Negroes and children: who cares?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not Mr. Berman, I gather."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, I agree with him. I read that story twice. Brats and niggers. Trembling leaves. Description. It doesn't mean anything."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">My hand, smoothing oil on her skin, seemed to have a temper of its own: it yearned to raise itself and come down on her buttocks. "Give me an example," I said quietly. "Of something that means something. In your opinion."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Wuthering Heights," she said, without hesitation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The urge in my hand was growing beyond control. "But that's unreasonable. You're talking about a work of genius."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It was, wasn't it? My wild sweet Cathy. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I said, "Oh" with recognizable relief, "oh" with a shameful, rising inflection, "the movie."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Her muscles hardened, the touch of her was like stone warmed by the sun. "Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't compare myself to you. Or, Berman. Therefore I can't feel superior. We want different things."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Don't you want to make money?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I haven't planned that far."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's how your stories sound. As though you'd written them without knowing the end. Well, I'll tell you: I you'd better make money. You have an expensive imagination. Not many people are going to buy you bird cages."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Sorry."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You will be if you hit me. You wanted to a minute ago: I could feel it in your hand; and you want to now."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I did, terribly; my hand, my heart was shaking as I recapped the bottle of oil. "Oh no, I wouldn't regret that. I'm only sorry you wasted your money on me: Rusty Trawler is too hard a way of earning it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She sat up on the army cot, her face, her naked breasts coldly blue in the sun-lamp light. "It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I'll give you two."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I went straight upstairs, got the bird cage, took it down and left it in front of her door. That settled that. Or so I imagined until the next morning when, as I was leaving for work, I saw the cage perched on a sidewalk ash-can waiting for the garbage collector. Rather sheepishly, I rescued it and carried it back to my room, a capitulation that did not lessen my resolve to put Holly Golightly absolutely out of my life. She was, I decided, "a crude exhibitionist," "a time waster," "an utter fake": someone never to be spoken to again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And I didn't. Not for a long while. We passed each other on the stairs with lowered eyes. If she walked into Joe Bell's, I walked out. At one point, Madame Sapphia Spanella, the coloratura and roller-skating enthusiast who lived on the first floor, circulated a petition among the brownstone's other tenants asking them to join her in having Miss Golightly evicted: she was, said Madame Spanella, "morally objectionable" and the "perpetrator of all-night gatherings that endangered the safety and sanity of her neighbors." Though I refused to sign, secretly I felt Madame Spanella had cause to complain. But her petition failed, and as April approached May, the open-windowed, warm spring nights were lurid with the party sounds, the loud-playing phonograph and martini laughter that emanated from Apt. 2.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was no novelty to encounter suspicious specimens among Holly's callers, quite the contrary; but one day late that spring, while passing through the brownstone's vestibule, I noticed a very provocative man examining her mailbox. A person in his early fifties with a hard, weathered face, gray forlorn eyes. He wore an old sweat-stained gray hat, and his cheap summer suit, a pale blue, hung too loosely on his lanky frame; his shoes were brown and brandnew. He seemed to have no intention of ringing Holly's bell. Slowly, as though he were reading Braille, he kept rubbing a finger across the embossed lettering of her name.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">That evening, on my way to supper, I saw the man again. He was standing across the street, leaning against a tree and staring up at Holly's windows. Sinister speculations rushed through my head. Was he a detective? Or some underworld agent connected with her Sing Sing friend, Sally Tomato? The situation revived my tenderer feelings for Holly; it was only fair to interrupt our feud long enough to warn her that she was being watched. As I walked to the corner, heading east toward the Hamburg Heaven at Seventy-ninth and Madison, I could feel the man's attention focused on me. Presently, without turning my head, I knew that he was following me. Because I could hear him whistling. Not any ordinary tune, but the plaintive, prairie melody Holly sometimes played on her guitar: Don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky. The whistling continued across Park Avenue and up Madison. Once, while waiting for a traffic light to change, I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he stooped to pet a sleazy Pomeranian. "That's a fine animal you got there," he told the owner in a hoarse, countrified drawl.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamburg Heaven was empty. Nevertheless, he took a seat right beside me at the long counter. He smelled of tobacco and sweat. He ordered a cup of coffee, but when it came he didn't touch it. Instead, he chewed on a toothpick and studied me in the wall mirror facing us.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Excuse me," I said, speaking to him via the mirror, "but what do you want?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The question didn't embarrass him; he seemed relieved to have had it asked. "Son," he said, "I need a friend."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He brought out a wallet. It was as worn as his leathery hands, almost falling to pieces; and so was the brittle, cracked, blurred snapshot he handed me. There were seven people in the picture, all grouped together on the sagging porch of a stark wooden house, and all children, except for the man himself, who had his arm around the waist of a plump blond little girl with a hand shading her eyes against the sun.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's me," he said, pointing at himself. "That's her . . ." he tapped the plump girl. "And this one over here," he added, indicating a tow-headed beanpole, "that's her brother, Fred."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I looked at "her" again: and yes, now I can see it, an embryonic resemblance to Holly in the squinting, fat-cheeked child. At the same moment, I realized who the man must be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You're Holly's father."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He blinked, he frowned. "Her name's not Holly. She was a Lulamae Barnes. Was," he said, shifting the toothpick in his mouth, "till she married me. I'm her husband. Doc Golightly. I'm a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. Son, why are you laughin'?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It wasn't real laughter: it was nerves. I took a swallow of water and choked; he pounded me on the back. "This here's no humorous matter, son. I'm a tired man. I've been five years lookin' for my woman. Soon as I got that letter from Fred, saying where she was, I bought myself a ticket on the Greyhound. Lulamae belongs home with her husband and her churren."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Children?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Them's her churren," he said, almost shouted. He meant the four other young faces in the picture, two bare-footed girls and a pair of overalled boys. Well, of course: the man was deranged. "But Holly can't be the mother of those children. They're older than she is. Bigger."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Now, son," he said in a reasoning voice, "I didn't claim they was her natural-born churren. Their own precious mother, precious woman, Jesus rest her soul, she passed away July 4th, Independence Day, 1936. The year of the drought. When I married Lulamae, that was in December, 1938, she was going on fourteen. Maybe an ordinary person, being only fourteen, wouldn't know their right mind. But you take Lulamae, she was an exceptional woman. She knew good-and-well what she was doing when she promised to be my wife and the mother of my churren. She plain broke our hearts when she ran off like she done." He sipped his cold coffee, and glanced at me with a searching earnestness. "Now, son, do you doubt me? Do you believe what I'm saying is so?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I did. It was too implausible not to be fact; moreover, it dovetailed with O.J. Berman's description of the Holly he'd first encountered in California: "You don't know whether she's a hillbilly or an Okie or what." Berman couldn't be blamed for not guessing that she was a child-wife from Tulip, Texas.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Plain broke our hearts when she ran off like she done," the horse doctor repeated. "She had no cause. All the housework was done by her daughters. Lulamae could just take it easy: fuss in front of mirrors and wash her hair. Our own cows, our own garden, chickens, pigs: son, that woman got positively fat. While her brother growed into a giant. Which is a sight different from how they come to us. 'Twas Nellie, my oldest girl, 'twas Nellie brought 'em into the house. She come to me one morning, and said: 'Papa, I got two wild yunguns locked in the kitchen. I caught 'em outside stealing milk and turkey eggs.' That was Lulamae and Fred. Well, you never saw a more pitiful something. Ribs sticking out everywhere, legs so puny they can't hardly stand, teeth wobbling so bad they can't chew mush. Story was: their mother died of the TB, and their papa done the same -- and all the churren, a whole raft of 'em, they been sent off to live with different mean people. Now Lulamae and her brother, them two been living with some mean, no-count people a hundred miles east of Tulip. She had good cause to run off from that house. She didn't have none to leave mine. Twas her home." He leaned his elbows on the counter and, pressing his closed eyes with his fingertips, sighed. "She plumped out to be a real pretty woman. Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird. With something smart to say on every subject: better than the radio. First thing you know, I'm out picking flowers. I tamed her a crow and taught it to say her name. I showed her how to play the guitar. Just to look at her made the tears spring to my eyes. The night I proposed, I cried like a baby. She said: 'What you want to cry for, Doc? 'Course we'll be married. I've never been married before.' Well, I had to laugh, hug and squeeze her: never been married before!" He chuckled, chewed on his toothpick a moment. "Don't tell me that woman wasn't happy!" he said, challengingly. "We all doted on her. She didn't have to lift a finger, 'cept to eat a piece of pie. 'Cept to comb her hair and send away for all the magazines. We must've had a hunnerd dollars' worth of magazines come into that house. Ask me, that's what done it. Looking at show-off pictures. Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road. Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on." He put his hands over his eyes again; his breathing made a ragged noise. "The crow I give her went wild and flew away. All summer you could hear him. In the yard. In the garden. In the woods. All summer that damned bird was calling: Lulamae, Lulamae."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He stayed hunched over and silent, as though listening to the long-ago summer sound. I carried our checks to the cashier. While I was paying, he joined me. We left together and walked over to Park Avenue. It was a cool, blowy evening; swanky awnings flapped in the breeze. The quietness between us continued until I said: "But what about her brother? He didn't leave?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No, sir," he said, clearing his throat. "Fred was with us right till they took him in the Army. A fine boy. Fine with horses. He didn't know what got into Lulamae, how come she left her brother and husband and churren. After he was in the Army, though, Fred started hearing from her. The other day he wrote me her address. So I come to get her. I know he's sorry for what she done. I know she wants to go home." He seemed to be asking me to agree with him. I told him that I thought he'd find Holly, or Lulamae, somewhat changed. "Listen, son," he said, as we reached the steps of the brownstone, "I advised you I need a friend. Because I don't want to surprise her. Scare her none. That's why I've held off. Be my friend: let her know I'm here."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The notion of introducing Mrs. Golightly to her husband had its satisfying aspects; and, glancing up at her lighted windows, I hoped her friends were there, for the prospect of watching the Texan shake hands with Mag and Rusty and José was more satisfying still. But Doc Golightly's proud earnest eyes and sweat-stained hat made me ashamed of such anticipations. He followed me into the house and prepared to wait at the bottom of the stairs. "Do I look nice?" he whispered, brushing his sleeves, tightening the knot of his tie.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly was alone. She answered the door at once; in fact, she was on her way out -- white satin dancing pumps and quantities of perfume announced gala intentions. "Well, idiot," she said, and playfully slapped me with her purse. "I'm in too much of a hurry to make up now. We'll smoke the pipe tomorrow, okay?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Sure, Lulamae. If you're still around tomorrow."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She took off her dark glasses and squinted at me. It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and gray and green like broken bits of sparkle. "He told you that," she said in a small, shivering voice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, please. Where is he?" She ran past me into the hall. "Fred!" she called down the stairs. "Fred! Where are you, darling?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I could hear Doc Golightly's footsteps climbing the stairs. His head appeared above the banisters, and Holly backed away from him, not as though she were frightened, but as though she were retreating into a shell of disappointment. Then he was standing in front of her, hangdog and shy. "Gosh, Lulamae," he began, and hesitated, for Holly was gazing at him vacantly, as though she couldn't place him. "Gee, honey," he said, "don't they feed you up here? You're so skinny. Like when I first saw you. All wild around the eye."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly touched his face; her fingers tested the reality of his chin, his beard stubble. "Hello, Doc," she said gently, and kissed him on the cheek. "Hello, Doc," she repeated happily, as he lifted her off her feet in a rib-crushing grip. Whoops of relieved laughter shook him. "Gosh, Lulamae. Kingdom come."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Neither of them noticed me when I squeezed past them and went up to my room. Nor did they seem aware of Madame Sapphia Spanella, who opened her door and yelled: "Shut up! It's a disgrace. Do your whoring elsewhere."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Divorce him? Of course I never divorced him. I was only fourteen, for God's sake. It couldn't have been legal." Holly tapped an empty martini glass. "Two more, my darling Mr. Bell."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joe Bell, in whose bar we were sitting, accepted the order reluctantly. "You're rockin' the boat kinda early," he complained, crunching on a Tums. It was not yet noon, according to the black mahogany clock behind the bar, and he'd already served us three rounds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But it's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays. Besides, I haven't been to bed yet," she told him, and confided to me: "Not to sleep." She blushed, and glanced away guiltily. For the first time since I'd known her, she seemed to feel a need to justify herself: "Well, I had to. Doc really loves me, you know. And I love him. He may have looked old and tacky to you. But you don't know the sweetness of him, the confidence he can give to birds and brats and fragile things like that. Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot. I've always remembered Doc in my prayers. Please stop smirking!" she demanded, stabbing out a cigarette. "I do say my prayers."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I'm not smirking. I'm smiling. You're the most amazing person."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I suppose I am," she said, and her face, wan, rather bruised-looking in the morning light, brightened; she smoothed her tousled hair, and the colors of it glimmered like a shampoo advertisement. "I must look fierce. But who wouldn't? We spent the rest of the night roaming around in a bus station. Right up till the last minute Doc thought I was going to go with him. Even though I kept telling him: But, Doc, I'm not fourteen any more, and I'm not Lulamae. But the terrible part is (and I realized it while we were standing there) I am. I'm still stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch. Only now I call it having the mean reds."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joe Bell disdainfully settled the fresh martinis in front of us.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Moderately," Holly confessed. "But Doc knew what I meant. I explained it to him very carefully, and it was something he could understand. We shook hands and held on to each other and he wished me luck." She glanced at the clock. "He must be in the Blue Mountains by now."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What's she talkin' about?" Joe Bell asked me.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">TRAWLER MARRIES FOURTH. I was on a subway somewhere in Brooklyn when I saw that headline. The paper that bannered it belonged to another passenger. The only part of the text that I could see read: Rutherfurd "Rusty" Trawler, the millionaire playboy often accused of pro-Nazi sympathies, eloped to Greenwich yesterday with a beautiful -- Not that I wanted to read any more. Holly had married him: well, well. I wished I were under the wheels of the train. But I'd been wishing that before I spotted the headline. For a headful of reasons. I hadn't seen Holly, not really, since our drunken Sunday at Joe Bell's bar. The intervening weeks had given me my own case of the mean reds. First off, I'd been fired from my job: deservedly, and for an amusing misdemeanor too complicated to recount here. Also, my draft board was displaying an uncomfortable interest; and, having so recently escaped the regimentation of a small town, the idea of entering another form of disciplined life made me desperate. Between the uncertainty of my draft status and a lack of specific experience, I couldn't seem to find another job. That was what I was doing on a subway in Brooklyn: returning from a discouraging interview with an editor of the now defunct newspaper, PM. All this, combined with the city heat of the summer, had reduced me to a state of nervous inertia. So I more than half meant it when I wished I were under the wheels of the train. The headline made the desire quite positive. If Holly could marry that "absurd foetus," then the army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me. Or, and the question is apparent, was my outrage a little the result of being in love with Holly myself? A little. For I was in love with her. Just as I'd once been in love with my mother's elderly colored cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">When I reached my station I bought a paper; and, reading the tail-end of that sentence, discovered that Rusty's bride was: a beautiful cover girl from the Arkansas hills, Miss Margaret Thatcher Fitzhue Wildwood. Mag! My legs went so limp with relief I took a taxi the rest of the way home.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Madame Sapphia Spanella met me in the hall, wild-eyed and wringing her hands. "Run," she said. "Bring the police. She is killing somebody! Somebody is killing her!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It sounded like it. As though tigers were loose in Holly's apartment. A riot of crashing glass, of rippings and callings and overturned furniture. But there were no quarreling voices inside the uproar, which made it seem unnatural. "Run," shrieked Madame Spanella, pushing me. "Tell the police murder!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I ran; but only upstairs to Holly's door. Pounding on it had one result: the racket subsided. Stopped altogether. But leading to let me in went unanswered, and my efforts to break down the door merely culminated in a bruised shoulder. Then below I heard Madame Spanella commanding some newcomer to go for the police. "Shut up," she was told, "and get out of my way."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was José Ybarra-Jaegar. Looking not at all the smart Brazilian diplomat; but sweaty and frightened. He ordered me out of his way, too. And, using his own key, opened the door. "In here, Dr. Goldman," he said, beckoning to a man accompanying him.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since no one prevented me, I followed them into the apartment, which was tremendously wrecked. At last the Christmas tree had been dismantled, very literally: its brown dry branches sprawled in a welter of torn-up books, broken lamps and phonograph records. Even the icebox had been emptied, its contents tossed around the room: raw eggs were sliding down the walls and in the midst of the debris Holly's no-name cat was calmly licking a puddle of milk.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the bedroom, the smell of smashed perfume bottles made me gag. I stepped on Holly's dark glasses; they were lying on the floor, the lenses already shattered, the frames cracked in half. Perhaps that is why Holly, a rigid figure on the bed, stared at José so blindly, seemed not to see the doctor, who, testing her pulse, crooned: "You're a tired young lady. Very tired. You want to go to sleep, don't you? Sleep."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly rubbed her forehead, leaving a smear of blood from a cut finger. "Sleep," she said, and whimpered like an exhausted, fretful child. "He's the only one would ever let me. Let me hug him on cold nights. I saw a place in Mexico. With horses. By the sea."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"With horses by the sea," lullabied the doctor, selecting from his black case a hypodermic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">José averted his face, queasy at the sight of a needle. "Her sickness is only grief?" he asked, his difficult English lending the question an unintended irony. "She is grieving only?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Didn't hurt a bit, now did it?" inquired the doctor, smugly dabbing Holly's arm with a scrap of cotton.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She came to sufficiently to focus the doctor. "Everything hurts. Where are my glasses?" But she didn't need them. Her eyes were closing of their own accord.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"She is only grieving?" insisted José.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Please, sir," the doctor was quite short with him, "if you will leave me alone with the patient."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">José withdrew to the front room, where he released his temper on the snooping, tiptoeing presence of Madame Spanella. "Don't touch me! I'll call the police," she threatened as he whipped her to the door with Portuguese oaths.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He considered throwing me out, too; or so I surmised from his expression. Instead, he invited me to have a drink. The only unbroken bottle we could find contained dry vermouth. "I have a worry," he confided. "I have a worry that this should cause scandal. Her crashing everything. Conducting like a crazy. I must have no public scandal. It is too delicate: my name, my work."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He seemed cheered to learn that I saw no reason for a "scandal"; demolishing one's own possessions was, presumably, a private affair.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It is only a question of grieving," he firmly declared. "When the sadness came, first she throws the drink she is drinking. The bottle. Those books. A lamp. Then I am scared. I hurry to bring a doctor."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But why?" I wanted to know. "Why should she have a fit over, Rusty? If I were her, I'd celebrate."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Rusty?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was still carrying my newspaper, and showed him the headline.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, that." He grinned rather scornfully. "They do us a grand favor, Rusty and Mag. We laugh over it: how they think they break our hearts when all the time we want them to run away. I assure you, we were laughing when the sadness came." His eyes searched the litter on the floor; he picked up a ball of yellow paper. "This," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was a telegram from Tulip, Texas: Received notice young Fred killed in action overseas stop your husband and children join in the sorrow of our mutual loss stop letter follows love Doc. Holly never mentioned her brother again: except once. Moreover, she stopped calling me Fred. June, July, all through the warm months she hibernated like a winter animal who did not know spring had come and gone. Her hair darkened, she put on weight. She became rather careless about her clothes: used to rush round to the delicatessen wearing a rain-slicker and nothing underneath. José moved into the apartment, his name replacing Mag Wildwood's on the mailbox. Still, Holly was a good deal alone, for José stayed in Washington three days a week. During his absences she entertained no one and seldom left the apartment -- except on Thursdays, when she made her weekly trip to Ossining.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Which is not to imply that she had lost interest in life; far from it, she seemed more content, altogether happier than I'd ever seen her. A keen sudden un-Holly-like enthusiasm for homemaking resulted in several un-Holly-like purchases: at a Parke-Bernet auction she acquired a stag-at-bay hunting tapestry and, from the William Randolph Hearst estate, a gloomy pair of Gothic "easy" chairs; she bought the complete Modern Library, shelves of classical records, innumerable. Metropolitan Museum reproductions (including a statue of a Chinese cat that her own cat hated and hissed at and ultimately broke), a Waring mixer and a pressure cooker and a library of cook books. She spent whole hausfrau afternoons slopping about in the sweatbox of her midget kitchen: "José says I'm better than the Colony. Really, who would have dreamed I had such a great natural talent? A month ago I couldn't scramble eggs." And still couldn't, for that matter. Simple dishes, steak, a proper salad, were beyond her. Instead, she fed José, and occasionally myself, outré soups (brandied black terrapin poured into avocado shells) Nero-ish novelties (roasted pheasant stuffed with pomegranates and persimmons) and other dubious innovations (chicken and saffron rice served with a chocolate sauce: "An East Indian classic, my dear.") Wartime sugar and cream rationing restricted her imagination when it came to sweets -- nevertheless, she once managed something called Tobacco Tapioca: best not describe it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nor describe her attempts to master Portuguese, an ordeal as tedious to me as it was to her, for whenever I visited her an album of Linguaphone records never ceased rotating on the phonograph. Now, too, she rarely spoke a sentence that did not begin, "After we're married -- " or "When we move to Rio -- " Yet José had never suggested marriage. She admitted it. "But, after all, he knows I'm preggers. Well, I am, darling. Six weeks gone. I don't see why that should surprise you. It didn't me. Not un peu bit. I'm delighted. I want to have at least nine. I'm sure some of them will be rather dark -- José has a touch of le nègre, I suppose you guessed that? Which is fine by me: what could be prettier than a quite coony baby with bright green beautiful eyes? I wish, please don't laugh -- but I wish I'd been a virgin for him, for José. Not that I've warmed the multitudes some people say: I don't blame the bastards for saying it, I've always thrown out such a jazzy line. Really, though, I toted up the other night, and I've only had eleven lovers -- not counting anything that happened before I was thirteen because, after all, that just doesn't count. Eleven. Does that make me a whore? Look at Mag Wildwood. Or Honey Tucker. Or Rose Ellen Ward. They've had the old clap-yo'-hands so many times it amounts to applause. Of course I haven't anything against whores. Except this: some of them may have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts. I mean, you can't bang the guy and cash his checks and at least not try to believe you love him. I never have. Even Benny Shacklett and all those rodents. I sort of hypnotized myself into thinking their sheer rattiness had a certain allure. Actually, except for Doc, if you want to count Doc, José is my first non-rat romance. Oh, he's not my idea of the absolute finito. He tells little lies and he worries what people think and he takes about fifty baths a day: men ought to smell somewhat. He's too prim, too cautious to be my guy ideal; he always turns his back to get undressed and he makes too much noise when he eats and I don't like to see him run because there's something funny-looking about him when he runs. If I were free to choose from everybody alive, just snap my fingers and say come here you, I wouldn't pick José. Nehru, he's nearer the mark. Wendell Wilkie. I'd settle for Garbo any day. Why not? A person ought to be able to marry men or women or -- listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, I'd respect your feeling. No, I'm serious. Love should be allowed. I'm all for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is. Because I do love José -- I'd stop smoking if he asked me to. He's friendly, he can laugh me out of the mean reds, only I don't have them much any more, except sometimes, and even then they're not so hideola that I gulp Seconal or have to haul myself to Tiffany's: I take his suit to the cleaner, or stuff some mushrooms, and I feel fine, just great. Another thing, I've thrown away my horoscopes. I must have spent a dollar on every goddamn star in the goddamn planetarium. It's a bore, but the answer, is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not law-type honest -- I'd rob a grave, I'd steal two-bits off a dead man's eyes if I thought it would contribute to the day's enjoyment -- but unto-thyself-type honest. Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to. Oh, screw it, cookie -- hand me my guitar, and I'll sing you a fada in the most perfect Portuguese."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship's more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments. Frequently, when he was out of town (I'd developed hostile attitudes toward him, and seldom used his name) we spent entire evenings together during which we exchanged less than a hundred words; once, we walked all the way to Chinatown, ate a chow-mein supper, bought some paper lanterns and stole a box of joss sticks, then moseyed across the Brooklyn Bridge, and on the bridge, as we watched seaward-moving ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline, she said: "Years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my nine Brazilian brats. Because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river -- I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it." And I said: "Do shut up," for I felt infuriatingly left out -- a tugboat in drydock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistles whistling and confetti in the air. So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I've lived.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It happened to fall on the 30th of September, my birthday, a fact which had no effect on events, except that, expecting some form of monetary remembrance from my family, I was eager for the postman's morning visit. Indeed, I went downstairs and waited for him. If I had not been loitering in the vestibule, then Holly would not have asked me to go horseback riding; and would not, consequently, have had the opportunity to save my life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Come on," she said, when she found me awaiting the postman. "Let's walk a couple of horses around the park." She was wearing a windbreaker and a pair of blue jeans and tennis shoes; she slapped her stomach, drawing attention to its flatness: "Don't think I'm out to lose the heir. But there's a horse, my darling old Mabel Minerva -- I can't go without saying good-bye to Mabel Minerva."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Good-bye?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"A week from Saturday. José bought the tickets." In rather a trance, I let her lead me down to the street. "We change planes in Miami. Then over the sea. Over the Andes. Taxi!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the Andes. As we rode in a cab across Central Park it seemed to me as though I, too, were flying, desolately floating over snow-peaked and perilous territory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But you can't. After all, what about. Well, what about. Well, you can't really run off and leave everybody."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't think anyone will miss me. I have no friends."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I will. Miss you. So will Joe Bell. And oh -- millions. Like Sally. Poor Mr. Tomato."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I loved old Sally," she said, and sighed. "You know I haven't been to see him in a month? When I told him I was going away, he was an angel. Actually" -- she frowned -- "he seemed delighted that I was leaving the country. He said it was all for the best. Because sooner or later there might be trouble. If they found out I wasn't his real niece. That fat lawyer, O'Shaughnessy, O'Shaughnessy sent me five hundred dollars. In cash. A wedding present from Sally."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I wanted to be unkind. "You can expect a present from me, too. When, and if, the wedding happens."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She laughed. "He'll marry me, all right. In church. And with his family there. That's why we're waiting till we get to Rio."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Does he know you're married already?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What's the matter with you? Are you trying to ruin the day? It's a beautiful day: leave it alone!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But it's perfectly possible -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It isn't possible. I've told you, that wasn't legal. It couldn't be." She rubbed her nose, and glanced at me sideways. "Mention that to a living soul, darling. I'll hang you by your toes and dress you for a hog."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The stables -- I believe they have been replaced by television studios -- were on West Sixty-sixth street Holly selected for me an old sway-back black and white mare: "Don't worry, she's safer than a cradle." Which, in my case, was a necessary guarantee, for ten-cent pony rides at childhood carnivals were the limit of my equestrian experience. Holly helped hoist me into the saddle, then mounted her own horse, a silvery animal that took the lead as we jogged across the traffic of Central Park West and entered a riding path dappled with leaves denuding breezes danced about.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"See?" she shouted. "It's great!" And suddenly it was. Suddenly, watching the tangled colors of Holly's hair flash in the red-yellow leaf light, I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen. Very gently the horses began to trot, waves of wind splashed us, spanked our faces, we plunged in and out of sun and shadow pools, and joy, a glad-to-be-alive exhilaration, jolted through me like a jigger of nitrogen. That was one minute; the next introduced farce in grim disguise.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">For all at once, like savage members of a jungle ambush, a band of Negro boys leapt out of the shrubbery along the path. Hooting, cursing, they launched rocks and thrashed at the horse's rumps with switches.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mine, the black and white mare, rose on her hind legs, whinnied, teetered like a tightrope artist, then blue-streaked down the path, bouncing my feet out of the stirrups and leaving me scarcely attached. Her hooves made the gravel stones spit sparks. The sky careened. Trees, a lake with little-boy sailboats, statues went by licketysplit. Nursemaids rushed to rescue their charges from our awesome approach; men, bums and others, yelled: "Pull in the reins!" and "Whoa, boy, whoa!" and "Jump!" It was only later that I remembered these voices; at the time I was simply conscious of Holly, the cowboy-sound of her racing behind me, never quite catching up, and over and over calling encouragements. Onward: across the park and out into Fifth Avenue: stampeding against the noonday traffic, taxis, buses that screechingly swerved. Past the Duke mansion, the Frick Museum, past the Pierre and the Plaza. But Holly gained ground; moreover, a mounted policeman had joined the chase: flanking my runaway mare, one on either side, their horses performed a pincer movement that brought her to a steamy halt. It was then, at last, that I fell off her back. Fell off and picked myself up and stood there, not altogether certain where I was. A crowd gathered. The policeman huffed and wrote in a book: presently he was most sympathetic, grinned and said he would arrange for our horses to be returned to their stable.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly put us in a taxi. "Darling. How do you feel?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Fine."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But you haven't any pulse," she said, feeling my wrist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Then I must be dead."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No, idiot. This is serious. Look at me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The trouble was, I couldn't see her; rather, I saw several Holly's, a trio of sweaty faces so white with concern that I was both touched and embarrassed. "Honestly. I don't feel anything. Except ashamed."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Please. Are you sure? Tell me the truth. You might have been killed."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But I wasn't. And thank you. For saving my life. You're wonderful. Unique. I love you."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Damn fool." She kissed me on the cheek. Then there were four of her, and I fainted dead away.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That evening, photographs of Holly were frontpaged by the late edition of the Journal-American and by the early editions of both the Daily News and the Daily Mirror. The publicity had nothing to do with runaway horses. It concerned quite another matter, as the headlines revealed: PLAYGIRL ARRESTED IN NARCOTICS SCANDAL (Journal-American), ARREST DOPE-SMUGGLING ACTRESS (Daily News), DRUG RING EXPOSED, GLAMOUR GIRL HELD (Daily Mirror).</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the lot, the News printed the most striking picture: Holly, entering police headquarters, wedged between two muscular detectives, one male, one female. In this squalid context even her clothes (she was still wearing her riding costume, windbreaker and blue jeans) suggested a gang-moll hooligan: an impression dark glasses, disarrayed coiffure and a Picayune cigarette dangling from sullen lips did not diminish. The caption read: Twenty-year-old Holly Golightly, beautiful movie starlet and cafe society celebrity D.A. alleges to be key figure in international drug-smuggling racket linked to racketeer Salvatore "Sally" Tomato. Dets. Patrick Connor and Sheilah Fezzonetti (L. and R.) are shown escorting her into 67th St. Precinct. See story on Pg. 3. The story, featuring a photograph of a man identified as Oliver "Father" O'Shaughnessy (shielding his face with a fedora), ran three full columns. Here, somewhat condensed, are the pertinent paragraphs: Members of café society were stunned today by the arrest of gorgeous Holly Golightly, twenty-year-old Hollywood starlet and highly publicized girl-about-New York. At the same time, 2 P.M., police nabbed Oliver O'Shaughnessy, 52, of the Hotel Seabord, W. 49th St., as he exited from a Hamburg Heaven on Madison Ave. Both are alleged by District Attorney Frank L. Donovan to be important figures in an international drug ring dominated by the notorious Mafia-führer Salvatore "Sally" Tomato, currently in Sing Sing serving a five-year rap for political bribery ... O'Shaughnessy, a defrocked priest variously known in crimeland circles as "Father" and "The Padre," has a history of arrests dating back to 1934, when he served two years for operating a phony Rhode Island mental institution, The Monastery. Miss Golightly, who has no previous criminal record, was arrested in her luxurious apartment at a swank East Side address ... Although the D.A.'s office has issued no formal statement, responsible sources insist the blond and beautiful actress, not long ago the constant companion of multimillionaire Rutherfurd Trawler, has been acting as "liaison" between the imprisoned Tomato and his chief-lieutenant, O'Shaughnessy ... Posing as a relative of Tomato's, Miss Golightly is said to have paid weekly visits to Sing Sing, and on these occasions Tomato supplied her with verbally coded messages which she then transmitted to O'Shaughnessy. Via this link, Tomato, believed to have been born in Cefalu, Sicily, in 1874, was able to keep firsthand control of a world-wide narcotics syndicate with outposts in Mexico, Cuba, Sicily, Tangier, Tehran and Dakar. But the D.A.'s office refused to offer any detail on these allegations or even verify them ... Tipped off, a large number of reporters were on hand at the E. 67th St. Precinct station when the accused pair arrived for booking. O'Shaughnessy, a burly red-haired man, refused comment and kicked one cameraman in the groin. But Miss Golightly, a fragile eyeful, even though attired like a tomboy in slacks and leather jacket, appeared relatively unconcerned. "Don't ask me what the hell this is about," she told reporters. "Parce-que Je ne sais pas, mes chères. (Because I do not know, my dears). Yes -- I have visited Sally Tomato. I used to go to see him every week. What's wrong with that? He believes in God, and so do I." ... </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then, under the subheading ADMITS OWN DRUG ADDICTION: Miss Golightly smiled when a reporter asked whether or not she herself is a narcotics user. "I've had a little go at marijuana. It's not half so destructive as brandy. Cheaper, too. Unfortunately, I prefer brandy. No, Mr. Tomato never mentioned drugs to me. It makes me furious, the way these wretched people keep persecuting him. He's a sensitive, a religious person. A darling old man."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is one especially gross error in this report: she was not arrested in her "luxurious apartment." It took place in my own bathroom. I was soaking away my horse-ride pains in a tub of scalding water laced with Epsom salts; Holly, an attentive nurse, was sitting on the edge of the tub waiting to rub me with Sloan's liniment and tuck me into bed. There was a knock at the front door. As the door was unlocked, Holly called Come in. In came Madame Sapphia Spanella, trailed by a pair of civilian-clothed detectives, one of them a lady with thick yellow braids roped round her head.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Here she is: the wanted woman!" boomed Madame Spanella, invading the bathroom and leveling a finger, first at Holly's, then my nakedness. "Look. What a whore she is." The male detective seemed embarrassed: by Madame Spanella and by the situation; but a harsh enjoyment tensed the face of his companion -- she plumped a hand on Holly's shoulder and, in a surprising baby-child voice, said: "Come along, sister. You're going places." Whereupon Holly coolly told her: "Get them cotton-pickin' hands off of me, you dreary, driveling old bull-dyke." Which rather enraged the lady: she slapped Holly damned hard. So hard, her head twisted on her neck, and the bottle of linement, flung from her hand, smithereened on the tile floor -- where I, scampering out of the tub to enrich the fray, stepped on it and all but severed both big toes. Nude and bleeding a path of bloody footprints, I followed the action as far as the hall. "Don't forget," Holly managed to instruct me as the detectives propelled her down the stairs, "please feed the cat."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course I believed Madame Spanella to blame: she'd several times called the authorities to complain about Holly. It didn't occur to me the affair could have dire dimensions until that evening when Joe Bell showed up flourishing the newspapers. He was too agitated to speak sensibly; he caroused the room hitting his fists together while I read the accounts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then he said: "You think it's so? She was mixed up in this lousy business?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, yes."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He popped a Tums in his mouth and, glaring at me, chewed it as though he were crunching my bones. "Boy, that's rotten. And you meant to be her friend. What a bastard!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Just a minute. I didn't say she was involved knowingly. She wasn't. But there, she did do it. Carry messages and whatnot -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said: "Take it pretty calm, don't you? Jesus, she could get ten years. More." He yanked the papers away from me. "You know her friends. These rich fellows. Come down to the bar, we'll start phoning. Our girl's going to need fancier shysters than I can afford."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was too sore and shaky to dress myself; Joe Bell had to help. Back at his bar he propped me in the telephone booth with a triple martini and a brandy tumbler full of coins. But I couldn't think who to contact. José was in Washington, and I had no notion where to reach him there. Rusty Trawler? Not that bastard! Only: what other friends of hers did I know? Perhaps she'd been right when she'd said she had none, not really.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I put through a call to Crestview 5-6958 in Beverly Hills, the number long-distance information gave me for O.J. Berman. The person who answered said Mr. Berman was having a massage and couldn't be disturbed: sorry, try later. Joe Bell was incensed -- told me I should have said it was a life and death matter; and he insisted on my trying Rusty. First, I spoke to Mr. Trawler's butler -- Mr. and Mrs. Trawler, he announced, were at dinner and might he take a message? Joe Bell shouted into the receiver: "This is urgent, mister. Life and death." The outcome was that I found myself talking -- listening, rather -- to the former Mag Wildwood: "Are you starkers?" she demanded. "My husband and I will positively sue anyone who attempts to connect our names with that ro-ro-rovolting and de-de-degenerate girl. I always knew she was a hop-hop-head with no more morals than a hound-bitch in heat. Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand percent. We will positively sue anyone who -- " Hanging up, I remembered old Doc down in Tulip, Texas; but no, Holly wouldn't like it if I called him, she'd kill me good.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I rang California again; the circuits were busy, stayed busy, and by the time O.J. Berman was on the line I'd emptied so many martinis he had to tell me why I was phoning him: "About the kid, is it? I know already. I spoke already to Iggy Fitelstein. Iggy's the best shingle in New York. I said Iggy you take care of it, send me the bill, only keep my name anonymous, see. Well, I owe the kid something. Not that I owe her anything, you want to come down to it. She's crazy. A phony. But a real phony, you know? Anyway, they only got her in ten thousand bail. Don't worry, Iggy'll spring her tonight -- it wouldn't surprise me she's home already."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But she wasn't; nor had she returned the next morning when I went down to feed her cat. Having no key to the apartment, I used the fire escape and gained entrance through a window. The cat was in the bedroom, and he was not alone: a man was there, crouching over a suitcase. The two of us, each thinking the other a burglar, exchanged uncomfortable stares as I stepped through the window. He had a pretty face, lacquered hair, he resembled José; moreover, the suitcase he'd been packing contained the wardrobe José kept at Holly's, the shoes and suits she fussed over, was always carting to menders and cleaners. And I said, certain it was so: "Did Mr. Ybarra-Jaegar send you?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I am the cousin," he said with a wary grin and just-penetrable accent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Where is José?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He repeated the question, as though translating it into another language. "Ah, where she is! She is wailing," he said and, seeming to dismiss me, resumed his valet activities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So: the diplomat was planning a powder. Well, I wasn't amazed; or in the slightest sorry. Still, what a heartbreaking stunt: "He ought to be horse-whipped."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The cousin giggled, I'm sure he understood me. He shut the suitcase and produced a letter. "My cousin, she ask me leave that for his chum. You will oblige?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">On the envelope was scribbled: For Miss H. Golightly -- Courtesy Bearer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I sat down on Holly's bed, and hugged Holly's cat to me, and felt as badly for Holly, every iota, as she could feel for herself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes, I will oblige."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And I did: without the least wanting to. But I hadn't the courage to destroy the letter; or the will power to keep it in my pocket when Holly very tentatively inquired if, if by any chance, I'd had news of José. It was two mornings later; I was sitting by her bedside in a room that reeked of iodine and bedpans, a hospital room. She had been there since the night of her arrest. "Well, darling," she'd greeted me, as I tiptoed toward her carrying a carton of Picayune cigarettes and a wheel of new-autumn violets, "I lost the heir." She looked not quite twelve years: her pale vanilla hair brushed back, her eyes, for once minus their dark glasses, clear as rain water -- one couldn't believe how ill she'd been.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yet it was true: "Christ, I nearly cooled. No fooling, the fat woman almost had me. She was yakking up a storm. I guess I couldn't have told you about the fat woman. Since I didn't know about her myself until my brother died. Right away I was wondering where he'd gone, what it meant, Fred's dying; and then I saw her, she was there in the room with me, and she had Fred cradled in her arms, a fat mean red bitch rocking in a rocking chair with Fred on her lap and laughing like a brass band. The mockery of it! But it's all that's ahead for us, my friend: this comedienne waiting to give you the old razz. Now do you see why I went crazy and broke everything?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Except for the lawyer O.J. Berman had hired, I was the only visitor she had been allowed. Her room was shared by other patients, a trio of triplet-like ladies who, examining me with an interest not unkind but total, speculated in whispered Italian. Holly explained that: "They think you're my downfall, darling. The fellow what done me wrong"; and, to a suggestion that she set them straight, replied: "I can't. They don't speak English. Anyway, I wouldn't dream of spoiling their fun." It was then that she asked about José.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The instant she saw the letter she squinted her eyes and bent her lips in a tough tiny smile that advanced her age immeasurably. "Darling," she instructed me, "would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Guided by a compact mirror, she powdered, painted every vestige of twelve-year-old out of her face. She shaped her lips with one tube, colored her cheeks from another. She penciled the rims of her eyes, blued the lids, sprinkled her neck with 4711; attached pearls to her ears and donned her dark glasses; thus armored, and after a displeased appraisal of her manicure's shabby condition, she ripped open the letter and let her eyes race through it while her stony small smile grew smaller and harder. Eventually she asked for a Picayune. Took a puff: "Tastes bum. But divine," she said and, tossing me the letter: "Maybe this will come in handy -- if you ever write a rat-romance. Don't be hoggy: read it aloud. I'd like to hear it myself."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It began: "My dearest little girl -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly at once interrupted. She wanted to know what I thought of the handwriting. I thought nothing: a tight, highly legible, uneccentric script. "It's him to a T. Buttoned up and constipated," she declared. "Go on."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"My dearest little girl, I have loved you knowing you were not as others. But conceive of my despair upon discovering in such a brutal and public style how very different you are from the manner of woman a man of my faith and career could hope to make his wife. Verily I grief for the disgrace of your present circumstance, and do not find it in my heart to add my condemn to the condemn that surrounds you. So I hope you will find it in your heart not to condemn me. I have my family to protect, and my name, and I am a coward where those institutions enter. Forget me, beautiful child. I am no longer here. I am gone home. But may God always be with you and your child. May God be not the same as -- José."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"In a way it seems quite honest. And even touching."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Touching? That square-ball jazz!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But after all, he says he's a coward; and from his point of view, you must see -- "</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly, however, did not want to admit that she saw; yet her face, despite its cosmetic disguise, confessed it. "All right, he's not a rat without reason. A super-sized, King Kong-type rat like Rusty. Benny Shacklett. But oh gee, golly goddamn," she said, jamming a fist into her mouth like a bawling baby, "I did love him. The rat."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Italian trio imagined a lover's crise and, placing the blame for Holly's groanings where they felt it belonged, tut-tutted their tongues at me. I was flattered: proud that anyone should think Holly cared for me. She quieted when I offered her another cigarette. She swallowed and said: "Bless you, Buster. And bless you for being such a bad jockey. If I hadn't had to play Calamity Jane I'd still be looking forward to the grub in an unwed mama's home. Strenuous exercise, that's what did the trick. But I've scared la merde out of the whole badge-department by saying it was because Miss Dykeroo slapped me. Yessir, I can sue them on several counts, including false arrest."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Until then, we'd skirted mention of her more sinister tribulations, and this jesting reference to them seemed appalling, pathetic, so definitely did it reveal how incapable she was of recognizing the bleak realities before her. "Now, Holly," I said, thinking: be strong, mature, an uncle. "Now, Holly. We can't treat it as a joke. We have to make plans."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You're too young to be stuffy. Too small. By the way, what business is it of yours?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"None. Except you're my friend, and I'm worried. I mean to know what you intend doing."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She rubbed her nose, and concentrated on the ceiling. "Today's Wednesday, isn't it? So I suppose I'll sleep until Saturday, really get a good schluffen. Saturday morning I'll skip out to the bank. Then I'll stop by the apartment and pick up a nightgown or two and my Mainbocher. Following which, I'll report to Idlewild. Where, as you damn well know, I have a perfectly fine reservation on a perfectly fine plane. And since you're such a friend I'll let you wave me off. Please stop shaking your head."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Holly. Holly. You can't do that."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Et pourquoi pas? I'm not hot-footing after José, if that's what you suppose. According to my census, he's strictly a citizen of Limboville. It's only: why should I waste a perfectly fine ticket? Already paid for? Besides, I've never been to Brazil."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Just what kind of pills have they been feeding you here? Can't you realize, you're under a criminal indictment. If they catch you jumping bail, they'll throw away the key. Even if you get away with it, you'll never be able to come home."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, so, tough titty. Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No, Holly, it's stupid. You're innocent. You've got to stick it out."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She said, "Rah, team, rah," and blew smoke in my face. She was impressed, however; her eyes were dilated by unhappy visions, as were mine: iron rooms, steel corridors of gradually closing doors. "Oh, screw it," she said, and stabbed out her cigarette. "I have a fair chance they won't catch me. Provided you keep your bouche fermez. Look. Don't despise me, darling." She put her hand over mine and pressed it with sudden immense sincerity. "I haven't much choice. I talked it over with the lawyer: oh, I didn't tell him anything regarding Rio -- he'd tip the badgers himself, rather than lose his fee, to say nothing of the nickels O.J. put up for bail. Bless O.J.'s heart; but once on the coast I helped him win more than ten thou in a single poker hand: we're square. No, here's the real shake: all the badgers want from me is a couple of free grabs and my services as a state's witness against Sally -- nobody has any intention of prosecuting me, they haven't a ghost of a case. Well, I may be rotten to the core, Maude, but: testify against a friend I will not. Not if they can prove he doped Sister Kenny. My yardstick is how somebody treats me, and old Sally, all right he wasn't absolutely white with me, say he took a slight advantage, just the same Sally's an okay shooter, and I'd let the fat woman snatch me sooner than help the law-boys pin him down." Tilting her compact mirror above her face, smoothing her lipstick with a crooked pinkie, she said: "And to be honest, that isn't all. Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl's complexion. Even if a jury gave me the Purple Heart, this neighborhood holds no future: they'd still have up every rope from LaRue to Perona's Bar and Grill -- take my word, I'd be about as welcome as Mr. Frank E. Campbell. And if you lived off my particular talents, Cookie, you'd understand the kind of bankruptcy I'm describing. Uh, uh, I don't just fancy a fade-out that finds me belly-bumping around Roseland with a pack of West Side hillbillies. While the excellent Madame Trawler sashayes her twat in and out of Tiffany's. I couldn't take it. Give me the fat woman any day."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A nurse, soft-shoeing into the room, advised that visiting hours were over. Holly started to complain, and was curtailed by having a thermometer popped in her mouth. But as I took leave, she unstoppered herself to say: "Do me a favor, darling. Call up the Times, or whatever you call, and get a list of the fifty richest men in Brazil. I'm not kidding. The fifty richest: regardless of race or color. Another favor -- poke around my apartment till you find that medal you gave me. The St. Christopher. I'll need it for the trip."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The sky was red Friday night, it thundered, and Saturday, departing day, the city swayed in a squall-like downpour. Sharks might have swum through the air, though it seemed improbable a plane could penetrate it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But Holly, ignoring my cheerful conviction that her flight would not go, continued her preparations -- placing, I must say, the chief burden of them on me. For she had decided it would be unwise of her to come near the brownstone. Quite rightly, too: it was under surveillance, whether by police or reporters or other interested parties one couldn't tell -- simply a man, sometimes men, who hung around the stoop. So she'd gone from the hospital to a bank and straight then to Joe Bell's Bar. "She don't figure she was followed," Joe Bell told me when he came with a message that Holly wanted me to meet her there as soon as possible, a half-hour at most, bringing: "Her jewelry. Her guitar. Toothbrushes and stuff. And a bottle of hundred-year-old brandy: she says you'll find it hid down in the bottom of the dirty-clothes basket. Yeah, oh, and the cat. She wants the cat. But hell," he said, "I don't know we should help her at all. She ought to be protected against herself. Me, I feel like telling the cops. Maybe if I go back and build her some drinks, maybe I can get her drunk enough to call it off."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stumbling, skidding up and down the fire escape between Holly's apartment and mine, wind-blown and winded and wet to the bone (clawed to the bone as well, for the cat had not looked favorably upon evacuation, especially in such inclement weather) I managed a fast, first-rate job of assembling her going-away belongings. I even found the St. Christopher's medal. Everything was piled on the floor of my room, a poignant pyramid of brassières and dancing slippers and pretty things I packed in Holly's only suitcase. There was a mass left over that I had to put in paper grocery bags. I couldn't think how to carry the cat; until I thought of stuffing him in a pillowcase.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Never mind why, but once I walked from New Orleans to Nancy's Landing, Mississippi, just under five hundred miles. It was a light-hearted lark compared to the journey to Joe Bell's bar. The guitar filled with rain, rain softened the paper sacks, the sacks spilt and perfume spilled on the pavement, pearls rolled in the gutter: while the wind pushed and the cat scratched, the cat screamed -- but worse, I was frightened, a coward to equal José: those storming streets seemed aswarm with unseen presences waiting to trap, imprison me for aiding an outlaw.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The outlaw said: "You're late, Buster. Did you bring the brandy?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And the cat, released, leaped and perched on her shoulder: his tail swung like a baton conducting rhapsodic music. Holly, too, seemed inhabited by melody, some bouncy bon voyage oompahpah. Uncorking the brandy, she said: "This was meant to be part of my hope chest. The idea was, every anniversary we'd have a swig. Thank Jesus I never bought the chest. Mr. Bell, sir, three glasses."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You'll only need two," he told her. "I won't drink to your foolishness."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The more she cajoled him ("Ah, Mr. Bell. The lady doesn't vanish every day. Won't you toast her?"), the gruffer he was: "I'll have no part of it. If you're going to hell, you'll go on your own. With no further help from me." An inaccurate statement: because seconds after he'd made it a chauffeured limousine drew up outside the bar, and Holly, the first to notice it, put down her brandy, arched her eyebrows, as though she expected to see the District Attorney himself alight. So did I. And when I saw Joe Bell blush, I had to think: by God, he did call the police. But then, with burning ears, he announced: "It's nothing. One of them Carey Cadillacs. I hired it. To take you to the airport."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He turned his back on us to fiddle with one of his flower arrangements. Holly said: "Kind, dear Mr. Bell. Look at me, sir."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He wouldn't. He wrenched the flowers from the vase and thrust them at her; they missed their mark, scattered on the floor. "Good-bye," he said; and, as though he were going to vomit, scurried to the men's room. We heard the door lock.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Carey chauffeur was a worldy specimen who accepted our slapdash luggage most civilly and remained rock-faced when, as the limousine swished uptown through a lessening rain, Holly stripped off her clothes, the riding costume she'd never had a chance to substitute, and struggled into a slim black dress. We didn't talk: talk could have only led to argument; and also, Holly seemed too preoccupied for conversation. She hummed to herself, swigged brandy, she leaned constantly forward to peer out the windows, as if she were hunting an address -- or, I decided, taking a last impression of a scene she wanted to remember. It was neither of these. But this: "Stop here," she ordered the driver, and we pulled to the curb of a street in Spanish Harlem. A savage, a garish, a moody neighborhood garlanded with poster-portraits of movie stars and Madonnas. Sidewalk litterings of fruit-rind and rotted newspaper were hurled about by the wind, for the wind still boomed, though the rain had hushed and there were bursts of blue in the sky.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Holly stepped out of the car; she took the cat with her. Cradling him, she scratched his head and asked. "What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for a tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram," she said, dropping him; and when he did not move away, instead raised his thug-face and questioned her with yellowish pirate-eyes, she stamped her foot: "I said beat it!" He rubbed against her leg. "I said fuck off!" she shouted, then jumped back in the car, slammed the door, and: "Go," she told the driver. "Go. Go."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was stunned. "Well, you are. You are a bitch."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We'd traveled a block before she replied. "I told you. We just met by the river one day: that's all. Independents, both of us. We never made each other any promises. We never -- " she said, and her voice collapsed, a tic, an invalid whiteness seized her face. The car had paused for a traffic light. Then she had the door open, she was running down the street; and I ran after her.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the cat was not at the corner where he'd been left. There was no one, nothing on the street except a urinating drunk and two Negro nuns herding a file of sweet-singing children. Other children emerged from doorways and ladies leaned over their window sills to watch as Holly darted up and down the block, ran back and forth chanting: "You. Cat. Where are you? Here, cat." She kept it up until a bumpy-skinned boy came forward dangling an old tom by the scruff of its neck: "You wants a nice kitty, miss? Gimme a dollar."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The limousine had followed us. Now Holly let me steer her toward it. At the door, she hesitated; she looked past me, past the boy still offering his cat ("Haifa dollar. Two-bits, maybe? Two-bits, it ain't much"), and she shuddered, she had to grip my arm to stand up: "Oh, Jesus God. We did belong to each other. He was mine."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then I made her a promise, I said I'd come back and find her cat: "I'll take care of him, too. I promise."</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She smiled: that cheerless new pinch of a smile. "But what about me?" she said, whispered, and shivered again. "I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away. The mean reds, they're nothing. The fat woman, she nothing. This, though: my mouth's so dry, if my life depended on it I couldn't spit." She stepped in the car, sank in the seat. "Sorry, driver. Let's go."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">TOMATO'S TOMATO MISSING. And: DRUG-CASE ACTRESS BELIEVED GANGLAND VICTIM. In due time, however, the press reported: FLEEING PLAYGIRL TRACED TO RIO. Apparently no attempt was made by American authorities to recover her, and soon the matter diminished to an occasional gossip-column mention; as a news story, it was revived only once: on Christmas Day, when Sally Tomato died of a heart attack at Sing Sing. Months went by, a winter of them, and not a word from Holly. The owner of the brownstone sold her abandoned possessions, the white-satin bed, the tapestry, her precious Gothic chair; a new tenant acquired the apartment, his name was Quaintance Smith, and he entertained as many gentlemen callers of a noisy nature as Holly ever had -- though in this instance Madame Spanella did not object, indeed she doted on the young man and supplied filet mignon whenever he had a black eye. But in the spring a postcard came: it was scribbled in pencil, and signed with a lipstick kiss: Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost. Am joined at the hip with duhvine $enor. Love? Think so. Anyhoo am looking for somewhere to live ($enor has wife, 7 brats) and will let you know address when I know it myself. Mille tendresse. But the address, if it ever existed, never was sent, which made me sad, there was so much I wanted to write her: that I'd sold two stories, had read where the Trawlers were countersuing for divorce, was moving out of the brownstone because it was haunted. But mostly, I wanted to tell her about her cat. I had kept my promise; I had found him. It took weeks of after-work roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets, and there were many false alarms -- flashes of tiger-striped fur that, upon inspection, were not him. But one day, one cold sunshiny Sunday winter afternoon, it was. Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-29372063537277931772009-05-27T06:39:00.000-07:002009-05-27T06:41:51.268-07:00I Spy<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Graham Greene</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Charlie Stowe waited until he heard his mother snore before he got out of bed. Even then he moved with caution and tiptoed to the window. The front of the house was irregular, so that it was possible to see a light burning in his mother's room. But now all the windows were dark. A searchlight passed across the sky, lighting the banks of cloud and probing the dark deep spaces between, seeking enemy airships. The wind blew from the sea, and Charlie Stowe could hear behind his mother's snores the beating of the waves. A draught through the cracks in the window-frame stirred his nightshirt. Charlie Stowe was frightened.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>But the thought of the tobacconist's shop which his father kept down a dozen wooden stairs drew him on. He was twelve years old, and already boys at the County School mocked him because he had never smoked a cigarette. The packets were piled twelve deep below, Gold Flake and Players, De Reszke, Abdulla, Woodbines, and the little shop lay under a thin haze of stale smoke which would completely disguise his crime. That it was <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> a crime to steal some of his father's stock Charlie Stowe had no doubt, but he did not love his father; his father was unreal to him, a wraith, pale, thin, and indefinite, who noticed him only spasmodically and left even punishment to his mother. For his mother he felt a passionate demonstrative love; her large boisterous presence and her noisy charity filled the world for him; from her speech he judged her the friend of everyone, from the rector's wife to the "dear Queen," except the "Huns," the monsters who lurked in Zeppelins in the clouds. But his father's affection and dislike were as indefinite as his movements. Tonight he had said he would be in Norwich, and yet you never knew. Charlie Stowe had no sense of safety as he crept down the wooden stairs. When they creaked he clenched his fingers on the collar of his nightshirt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At the bottom of the stairs he came out quite suddenly into the little shop. It was too dark to see his way, and he did not dare touch the switch. For half a minute he sat in despair on the bottom step with his chin cupped in his hands. Then the regular movement of the searchlight was reflected through an upper window and the boy had time to fix in memory the pile of cigarettes, the counter, and the small hole under it. The footsteps of a policeman on the pavement made him grab the first packet to his hand and dive for the hole. A light shone along the floor and a hand tried the door, then the footsteps passed on, and Charlie cowered in the darkness.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At last he got his courage back by telling himself in his curiously adult way that if he were caught now there was nothing to be done about it, and he might as well have his smoke. He put a cigarette in his mouth and then remembered that he had no matches. For a while he dared not move. Three times the searchlight lit the shop, while he muttered taunts and encouragements. "May as well be hung for a sheep,"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Cowardy, cowardy custard," grown-up and childish exhortations oddly mixed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>But as he moved he heard footfalls in the street, the sound of several men walking rapidly. Charlie Stowe was old enough to feel surprise that anybody was about. The footsteps came nearer, stopped; a key was turned in the shop door, a voice said, "Let him in," and then he heard his father, "If you wouldn't mind being quiet, gentlemen. I don't want to wake up the family." There was a note unfamiliar to Charlie in the undecided voice. A torch flashed and the electric globe burst into blue light. The boy held his breath; he wondered whether his father would hear his heart beating, and he clutched his nightshirt tightly and prayed, "O God, don't let me be caught." Through a crack in the counter he could see his father where he stood, one hand held to his high stiff collar, between two men in bowler hats and belted mackintoshes. They were strangers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Have a cigarette," his father said in a voice dry as a biscuit. One of the men shook his head. "It wouldn't do, not when we are on duty. Thank you all the same." He spoke gently, but without kindness; Charlie Stowe thought his father must be ill.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Mind if I put a few in my pocket?" Mr. Stowe asked, and when the man nodded he lifted a pile of Gold Flake and Players from a shelf and caressed the packets with the tips of his fingers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Well," he said, "there's nothing to be done about it, and I may as well have my smokes." For a moment Charlie Stowe feared discovery, his father stared round the shop so thoroughly; he might have been seeing it for the first <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> time. "It's a good little business," he said, "for those that like it. The wife will sell out, I suppose. Else the neighbours'll be wrecking it. Well, you want to be off. A stitch in time. I'll get my coat."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"One of us'll come with you, if you don't mind," said the stranger gently.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You needn't trouble. It's on the peg here. There, I'm all ready."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The other man said in an embarrassed way: "Don't you want to speak to your wife?" The thin voice was decided. "Not me. Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. She'll have her chance later, won't she?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Yes, yes," one of the strangers said and he became very cheerful and encouraging. "Don't you worry too much. While there's life..." And suddenly his father tried to laugh.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When the door had closed Charlie Stowe tiptoed upstairs and got into bed. He wondered why his father had left the house again so late at night and who the strangers were. Surprise and awe kept him for a little while awake. It was as if a familiar photograph had stepped from the frame to reproach him with neglect. He remembered how his father had held tight to his collar and fortified himself with proverbs, and he thought for the first time that, while his mother was boisterous and kindly, his father was very like himself, doing things in the dark which frightened him. It would have pleased him to go down to his father and tell him that he loved him, but he could hear through the window the quick steps going away. He was alone in the house with his mother, and he fell asleep.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">1930</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-86264125206357005872009-05-27T06:29:00.000-07:002009-05-27T06:42:04.863-07:00The Killers<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Ernest Hemingway</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>The door of Henry’s lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s yours?” George asked them.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat, Al?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t know,” said Al. “I don’t know what I want to eat.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Outside it was getting dark. The streetlight came on outside the window. The two men at the counter read the menu. From the other end of the counter Nick Adams watched them. He had been talking to George when they came in.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes,” the first man said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It isn’t ready yet.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“What the hell do you put it on the card for?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s the dinner,” George explained. “You can get that at six o’clock.” </div><div><br /></div><div>George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter. </div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s five o’clock.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“The clock says twenty minutes past five,” the second man said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s twenty minutes fast.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Oh, to hell with the clock,” the first man said. “What have you got to eat?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I can give you any kind of sandwiches,” George said. “You can have ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver and bacon, or a steak.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Give me chicken croquettes with green peas and cream sauce and mashed potatoes.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s the dinner.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Everything we want’s the dinner, eh? That’s the way you work it.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“I can give you ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver—”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ll take ham and eggs,” the man called Al said. He wore a derby hat and a black overcoat buttoned across the chest. His face was small and white and he had tight lips. He wore a silk muffler and gloves.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Give me bacon and eggs,” said the other man. He was about the same size as Al. Their faces were different, but they were dressed like twins. Both wore overcoats too tight for them. They sat leaning forward, their elbows on the counter.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Got anything to drink?” Al asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Silver beer, bevo, ginger-ale,” George said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I mean you got anything to drink?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Just those I said.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“This is a hot town,” said the other. “What do they call it?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Summit.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Ever hear of it?” Al asked his friend.</div><div><br /></div><div>“No,” said the friend.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What do they do here nights?” Al asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“They eat the dinner,” his friend said. “They all come here and eat the big dinner.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s right,” George said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“So you think that’s right?” Al asked George.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sure.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You’re a pretty bright boy, aren’t you?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sure,” said George.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Well, you’re not,” said the other little man. “Is he, Al?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He’s dumb,” said Al. He turned to Nick. “What’s your name?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Adams.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Another bright boy,” Al said. “Ain’t he a bright boy, Max?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“The town’s full of bright boys,” Max said.</div><div><br /></div><div>George put the two platters, one of ham and eggs, the other of bacon and eggs, on the counter. He set down two side dishes of fried potatoes and closed the wicket into the kitchen.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Which is yours?” he asked Al. </div><div><br /></div><div>“Don’t you remember?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Ham and eggs.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Just a bright boy,” Max said. He leaned forward and took the ham and eggs. Both men ate with their gloves on. George watched them eat. </div><div><br /></div><div>“What are you looking at?” Max looked at George. </div><div><br /></div><div>“Nothing.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“The hell you were. You were looking at me.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Maybe the boy meant it for a joke, Max,” Al said. </div><div><br /></div><div>George laughed.</div><div><br /></div><div>“You don’t have to laugh,” Max said to him. “You don’t have to laugh at all, see?’</div><div><br /></div><div>“All right,” said George.</div><div><br /></div><div>“So he thinks it’s all right.” Max turned to Al. “He thinks it’s all right. That’s a good one.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Oh, he’s a thinker,” Al said. They went on eating.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s the bright boy’s name down the counter?” Al asked Max.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Hey, bright boy,” Max said to Nick. “You go around on the other side of the counter with your boy friend.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s the idea?” Nick asked. </div><div><br /></div><div>“There isn’t any idea.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You better go around, bright boy,” Al said. Nick went around behind the counter.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s the idea?” George asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“None of your damned business,” Al said. “Who’s out in the kitchen?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“The nigger.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“What do you mean the nigger?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“The nigger that cooks.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Tell him to come in.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s the idea?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Tell him to come in.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Where do you think you are?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“We know damn well where we are,” the man called Max said. “Do we look silly?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You talk silly,” A1 said to him. “What the hell do you argue with this kid for? Listen,” he said to George, “tell the nigger to come out here.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“What are you going to do to him?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Nothing. Use your head, bright boy. What would we do to a nigger?”</div><div><br /></div><div>George opened the slit that Opened back into the kitchen. “Sam,” he called. “Come in here a minute.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The door to the kitchen opened and the nigger came in. “What was it?” he asked. The two men at the counter took a look at him.</div><div><br /></div><div>“All right, nigger. You stand right there,” Al said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sam, the nigger, standing in his apron, looked at the two men sitting at the counter. “Yes, sir,” he said. Al got down from his stool.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’m going back to the kitchen with the nigger and bright boy,” he said. “Go on back to the kitchen, nigger. You go with him, bright boy.” The little man walked after Nick and Sam, the cook, back into the kitchen. The door shut after them. The man called Max sat at the counter opposite George. He didn’t look at George but looked in the mirror that ran along back of the counter. Henry’s had been made over from a saloon into a lunch counter.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Well, bright boy,” Max said, looking into the mirror, “why don’t you say something?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s it all about?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Hey, Al,” Max called, “bright boy wants to know what it’s all about.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Why don’t you tell him?” Al’s voice came from the kitchen.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What do you think it’s all about?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t know.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“What do you think?”</div><div><br /></div><div>Max looked into the mirror all the time he was talking.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I wouldn’t say.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Hey, Al, bright boy says he wouldn’t say what he thinks it’s all about.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“I can hear you, all right,” Al said from the kitchen. He had propped open the slit that dishes passed through into the kitchen with a catsup bottle. “Listen, bright boy,” he said from the kitchen to George. “Stand a little further along the bar. You move a little to the left, Max.” He was like a photographer arranging for a group picture.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Talk to me, bright boy,” Max said. “What do you think’s going to happen?”</div><div><br /></div><div>George did not say anything.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ll tell you,” Max said. “We’re going to kill a Swede. Do you know a big Swede named Ole Anderson?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yes.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He comes here to eat every night, don’t he?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sometimes he comes here.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He comes here at six o’clock, don’t he?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“If he comes.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“We know all that, bright boy,” Max said. “Talk about something else. Ever go to the movies?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Once in a while.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You ought to go to the movies more. The movies are fine for a bright boy like you.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“What are you going to kill Ole Anderson for? What did he ever do to you?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us.” </div><div><br /></div><div>And he’s only going to see us once,” Al said from the kitchen: </div><div><br /></div><div>“What are you going to kill him for, then?” George asked. </div><div><br /></div><div>“We’re killing him for a friend. Just to oblige a friend, bright boy.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Shut up,” said Al from the kitchen. “You talk too goddamn much.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Well, I got to keep bright boy amused. Don’t I, bright boy?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You talk too damn much,” Al said. “The nigger and my bright boy are amused by themselves. I got them tied up like a couple of girl friends in the convent.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I suppose you were in a convent.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You never know.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You were in a kosher convent. That’s where you were.”</div><div><br /></div><div>George looked up at the clock.</div><div><br /></div><div>“If anybody comes in you tell them the cook is off, and if they keep after it, you tell them you’ll go back and cook yourself. Do you get that, bright boy?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“All right,” George said. “What you going to do with us afterward?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’ll depend,” Max said. “That’s one of those things you never know at the time.”</div><div><br /></div><div>George looked up at the dock. It was a quarter past six. The door from the street opened. A streetcar motorman came in.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Hello, George,” he said. “Can I get supper?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sam’s gone out,” George said. “He’ll be back in about half an hour.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’d better go up the street,” the motorman said. George looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes, past six.</div><div><br /></div><div>“That was nice, bright boy,” Max said. “You’re a regular little gentleman.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He knew I’d blow his head off,” Al said from the kitchen.</div><div><br /></div><div>“No,” said Max. “It ain’t that. Bright boy is nice. He’s a nice boy. I like him.”</div><div><br /></div><div>At six-fifty-five George said: “He’s not coming.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Two other people had been in the lunchroom. Once George had gone out to the kitchen and made a ham-and-egg sandwich “to go” that a man wanted to take with him. Inside the kitchen he saw Al, his derby hat tipped back, sitting on a stool beside the wicket with the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun resting on the ledge. Nick and the cook were back to back in the corner, a towel tied in each of their mouths. George had cooked the sandwich, wrapped it up in oiled paper, put it in a bag, brought it in, and the man had paid for it and gone out.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Bright boy can do everything,” Max said. “He can cook and everything. You’d make some girl a nice wife, bright boy.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yes?” George said, “Your friend, Ole Anderson, isn’t going to come.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“We’ll give him ten minutes,” Max said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Max watched the mirror and the clock. The hands of the clock marked seven o’clock, and then five minutes past seven.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Come on, Al,” said Max. “We better go. He’s not coming.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Better give him five minutes,” Al said from the kitchen.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the five minutes a man came in, and George explained that the cook was sick.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Why the hell don’t you get another cook?” the man asked. “Aren’t you running a lunch-counter?” He went out.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Come on, Al,” Max said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What about the two bright boys and the nigger?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“They’re all right.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“You think so?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sure. We’re through with it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t like it,” said Al. “It’s sloppy. You talk too much.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Oh, what the hell,” said Max. “We got to keep amused, haven’t we?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“You talk too much, all the same,” Al said. He came out from the kitchen. The cut-off barrels of the shotgun made a slight bulge under the waist of his too tight-fitting overcoat. He straightened his coat with his gloved hands. </div><div><br /></div><div>“So long, bright boy,” he said to George. “You got a lot of luck.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s the truth,” Max said. “You ought to play the races, bright boy.” </div><div><br /></div><div>The two of them went out the door. George watched them, through the window, pass under the arc-light and across the street. In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team. George went back through the swinging door into the kitchen and untied Nick and the cook.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t want any more of that,” said Sam, the cook. “I don’t want any more of that.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Nick stood up. He had never had a towel in his mouth before.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Say,” he said. “What the hell?” He was trying to swagger it off.</div><div><br /></div><div>“They were going to kill Ole Anderson,” George said. “They were going to shoot him when he came in to eat.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Ole Anderson?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sure.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The cook felt the corners of his mouth with his thumbs.</div><div><br /></div><div>“They all gone?” he asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yeah,” said George. “They’re gone now.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t like it,” said the cook. “I don’t like any of it at all”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Listen,” George said to Nick. “You better go see Ole Anderson.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“All right.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You better not have anything to do with it at all,” Sam, the cook, said. “You better stay way out of it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Don’t go if you don’t want to,” George said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Mixing up in this ain’t going to get you anywhere,” the cook said. “You stay out of it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ll go see him,” Nick said to George. “Where does he live?”</div><div><br /></div><div>The cook turned away.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Little boys always know what they want to do,” he said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“He lives up at Hirsch’s rooming-house,” George said to Nick.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ll go up there.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Outside the arc-light shone through the bare branches of a tree. Nick walked up the street beside the car-tracks and turned at the next arc-light down a side-street. Three houses up the street was Hirsch’s rooming-house. Nick walked up the two steps and pushed the bell. A woman came to the door.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Is Ole Anderson here?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Do you want to see him?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yes, if he’s in.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Nick followed the woman up a flight of stairs and back to the end of a corridor. She knocked on the door.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Who is it?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s somebody to see you, Mr. Anderson,” the woman said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s Nick Adams.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Come in.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Nick opened the door and went into the room. Ole Anderson was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He had been a heavyweight prizefighter and he was too long for the bed. He lay with his head on two pillows. He did not look at Nick.</div><div><br /></div><div>“What was it?” he asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I was up at Henry’s,” Nick said, “and two fellows came in and tied up me and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you.”</div><div><br /></div><div>It sounded silly when he said it. Ole Anderson said nothing.</div><div><br /></div><div>“They put us out in the kitchen,” Nick went on. “They were going to shoot you when you came in to supper.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Ole Anderson looked at the wall and did not say anything.</div><div><br /></div><div>“George thought I better come and tell you about it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“There isn’t anything I can do about it,” Ole Anderson said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’ll tell you what they were like.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t want to know what they were like,” Ole Anderson said. He looked at the wall. “Thanks for coming to tell me about it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“That’s all right.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Nick looked at the big man lying on the bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Don’t you want me to go and see the police?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“No,” Ole Anderson said. “That wouldn’t do any good.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Isn’t there something I could do?” </div><div><br /></div><div>“No. There ain’t anything to do.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“Maybe it was just a bluff.” </div><div><br /></div><div>“No. It ain’t just a bluff.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Ole Anderson rolled over toward the wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>“The only thing is,” he said, talking toward the wall, “I just can’t make up my mind to go out. I been here all day.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Couldn’t you get out of town?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“No,” Ole Anderson said. “I’m through with all that running around.” </div><div><br /></div><div>He looked at the wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>“There ain’t anything to do now.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Couldn’t you fix it up some way?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“No. I got in wrong.” He talked in the same flat voice. “There ain’t anything to do. After a while I’ll make up my mind to go out.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I better go back and see George,” Nick said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“So long,” said Ole Anderson. He did not look toward Nick. “Thanks for coming around.”</div><div><br /></div><div>Nick went out. As he shut the door he saw Ole Anderson with all his clothes on, lying on the bed looking at the wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>“He’s been in his room all day,” the landlady said downstairs. “I guess he don’t feel well. I said to him: ‘Mr. Anderson, you ought to go out and take a walk on a nice fall day like this,’ but he didn’t feel like it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He doesn’t want to go out.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’m sorry he don’t feel well,” the woman said. “He’s an awfully nice man. He was in the ring, you know.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I know it.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“You’d never know it except from the way his face is,” the woman said.</div><div><br /></div><div>They stood talking just inside the street door. “He’s just as gentle.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Well, good night, Mrs. Hirsch,’ Nick said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’m not Mrs. Hirsch,” the woman said. “She owns the place. I just look after it for her. I’m Mrs. Bell.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Well, good night, Mrs. Bell,” Nick said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Good night,” the woman said.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nick walked up the dark street to the corner under the arc-light, and then along the car-tracks to Henry’s eating-house. George was inside, back of the counter.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Did you see Ole?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yes,” said Nick. “He’s in his room and he won’t go out.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The cook opened the door from the kitchen when he heard Nick’s voice.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I don’t even listen to it,” he said and shut the door.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Did you tell him about it?” George asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sure. I told him but he knows what it’s all about.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“What’s he going to do?”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Nothing.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“They’ll kill him.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I guess they will.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“He must have got mixed up in something in Chicago.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I guess so,” said Nick.</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s a hell of a thing!”</div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s an awful thing,” Nick said.</div><div><br /></div><div>They did not say anything. George reached down for a towel and wiped the counter.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I wonder what he did?” Nick said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Double-crossed somebody. That’s what they kill them for.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I’m going to get out of this town,” Nick said.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Yes,” said George. “That’s a good thing to do.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”</div><div><br /></div><div>“Well,” said George, “you better not think about it.”</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-43188173600203638902009-05-02T07:31:00.000-07:002009-05-02T07:38:22.469-07:00The Queen of Spades<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">By: Alexdandr S. Pushkin</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">I</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There was a card party at the rooms of Narumov of the Horse Guards. The long winter night passed away imperceptibly, and it was five o'clock in the morning before the company sat down to supper. Those who had won, ate with a good appetite; the others sat staring absently at their empty plates. When the champagne appeared, however, the conversation became more animated, and all took a part in it.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And how did you fare, Surin?" asked the host.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh, I lost, as usual. I must confess that I am unlucky: I play mirandole, I always keep cool, I never allow anything to put me out, and yet I always lose!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And you did not once allow yourself to be tempted to back the red?... Your firmness astonishes me."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"But what do you think of Hermann?" said one of the guests, pointing to a young Engineer: "he has never had a card in his hand in his life, he has never in, his life laid a wager, and yet he sits here till five o'clock in the morning watching our play."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Hermann is a German: he is economical--that is all!" observed Tomsky. "But if there is one person that I cannot understand, it is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedotovna."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How so?" inquired the guests.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I cannot understand," continued Tomsky, "how it is that my grandmother does not punt."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What is there remarkable about an old lady of eighty not punting?" said Narumov.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Then you do not know the reason why?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"No, really; haven't the faintest idea."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh! then listen. About sixty years ago, my grandmother went to Paris, where she created quite a sensation. People used to run after her to catch a glimpse of the 'Muscovite Venus.' Richelieu made love to her, and my grandmother maintains that he almost blew out his brains in consequence of her cruelty. At that time ladies used to play at faro. On one occasion at the Court, she lost a very considerable sum to the Duke of Orleans. On returning home, my grandmother removed the patches from her face, took off her hoops, informed my grandfather of her loss at the gaming-table, and ordered him to pay the money. My deceased grandfather, as far as I remember, was a sort of house-steward to my grandmother. He dreaded her like fire; but, on hearing of such a heavy loss, he almost went out of his mind; he calculated the various sums she had lost, and pointed out to her that in six months she had spent half a million francs, that neither their Moscow nor Saratov estates were in Paris, and finally refused point blank to pay the debt. My grandmother gave him a box on the ear and slept by herself as a sign of her displeasure. The next day she sent for her husband, hoping that this domestic punishment had produced an effect upon him, but she found him inflexible. For the first time in her life, she entered into reasonings and explanations with him, thinking to be able to convince him by pointing out to him that there are debts and debts, and that there is a great difference between a Prince and a coachmaker. But it was all in vain, my grandfather still remained obdurate. But the matter did not rest there. My grandmother did not know what to do. She had shortly before become acquainted with a very remarkable man. You have heard of Count St. Germain, about whom so many marvellous stories are told. You know that he represented himself as the Wandering Jew, as the discoverer of the elixir of life, of the philosopher's stone, and so forth. Some laughed at him as a charlatan; but Casanova, in his memoirs, says that he was a spy. But be that as it may, St. Germain, in spite of the mystery surrounding him, was a very fascinating person, and was much sought after in the best circles of society. Even to this day my grandmother retains an affectionate recollection of him, and becomes quite angry if any one speaks disrespectfully of him. My grandmother knew that St. Germain had large sums of money at his disposal. She resolved to have recourse to him, and she wrote a letter to him asking him to come to her without delay. The queer old man immediately waited upon her and found her overwhelmed with grief. She described to him in the blackest colours the barbarity of her husband, and ended by declaring that her whole hope depended upon his friendship and amiability.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"St. Germain reflected.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'I could advance you the sum you want,' said he; 'but I know that you would not rest easy until you had paid me back, and I should not like to bring fresh troubles upon you. But there is another way of getting out of your difficulty: you can win back your money.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'But, my dear Count,' replied my grandmother, 'I tell you that I haven't any money left.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"'Money is not necessary,' replied St. Germain: 'be pleased to listen to me.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Then he revealed to her a secret, for which each of us would give a good deal..."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The young officers listened with increased attention. Tomsky lit his pipe, puffed away for a moment and then continued:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the _jeu de la reine_. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused herself in an off-hand manner for not having yet paid her debt, by inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She chose three cards and played them one after the other: all three won _sonika_, [Said of a card when it wins or loses in the quickest possible time.] and my grandmother recovered every farthing that she had lost."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Mere chance!" said one of the guests.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"A tale!" observed Hermann.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Perhaps they were marked cards!" said a third.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I do not think so," replied Tomsky gravely.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What!" said Narumov, "you have a grandmother who knows how to hit upon three lucky cards in succession, and you have never yet succeeded in getting the secret of it out of her?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"That's the deuce of it!" replied Tomsky: "she had four sons, one of whom was my father; all four were determined gamblers, and yet not to one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have been a bad thing either for them or for me. But this is what I heard from my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, and he assured me, on his honour, that it was true. The late Chaplitzky--the same who died in poverty after having squandered millions--once lost, in his youth, about three hundred thousand roubles--to Zorich, if I remember rightly. He was in despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitzky. She gave him three cards, telling him to play them one after the other, at the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never play at cards again as long as he lived. Chaplitzky then went to his victorious opponent, and they began a fresh game. On the first card he staked fifty thousand rubles and won _sonika_; he doubled the stake and won again, till at last, by pursuing the same tactics, he won back more than he had lost ...</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"But it is time to go to bed: it is a quarter to six already."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And indeed it was already beginning to dawn: the young men emptied their glasses and then took leave of each other.</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">II</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The old Countess A---- was seated in her dressing-room in front of her looking--glass. Three waiting maids stood around her. One held a small pot of rouge, another a box of hair-pins, and the third a tall can with bright red ribbons. The Countess had no longer the slightest pretensions to beauty, but she still preserved the habits of her youth, dressed in strict accordance with the fashion of seventy years before, and made as long and as careful a toilette as she would have done sixty years previously. Near the window, at an embroidery frame, sat a young lady, her ward.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Good morning, grandmamma," said a young officer, entering the room. "_Bonjour, Mademoiselle Lise_. Grandmamma, I want to ask you something."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What is it, Paul?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I want you to let me introduce one of my friends to you, and to allow me to bring him to the ball on Friday."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Bring him direct to the ball and introduce him to me there. Were you at B----'s yesterday?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Yes; everything went off very pleasantly, and dancing was kept up until five o'clock. How charming Yeletzkaya was!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"But, my dear, what is there charming about her? Isn't she like her grandmother, the Princess Daria Petrovna? By the way, she must be very old, the Princess Daria Petrovna."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How do you mean, old?" cried Tomsky thoughtlessly; "she died seven years ago."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The young lady raised her head and made a sign to the young officer. He then remembered that the old Countess was never to be informed of the death of any of her contemporaries, and he bit his lips. But the old Countess heard the news with the greatest indifference.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Dead!" said she; "and I did not know it. We were appointed maids of honour at the same time, and when we were presented to the Empress..."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And the Countess for the hundredth time related to her grandson one of her anecdotes.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Come, Paul," said she, when she had finished her story, "help me to get up. Lizanka, where is my snuff-box?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And the Countess with her three maids went behind a screen to finish her toilette. Tomsky was left alone with the young lady.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Who is the gentleman you wish to introduce to the Countess?" asked Lizaveta Ivanovna in a whisper.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Narumov. Do you know him?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"No. Is he a soldier or a civilian?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"A soldier."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Is he in the Engineers?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"No, in the Cavalry. What made you think that he was in the Engineers?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The young lady smiled, but made no reply.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Paul," cried the Countess from behind the screen, "send me some new novel, only pray don't let it be one of the present day style."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What do you mean, grandmother?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"That is, a novel, in which the hero strangles neither his father nor his mother, and in which there are no drowned bodies. I have a great horror of drowned persons."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"There are no such novels nowadays. Would you like a Russian one?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Are there any Russian novels? Send me one, my dear, pray send me one!</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Good-bye, grandmother: I am in a hurry... Good-bye, Lizaveta Ivanovna. What made you think that Narumov was in the Engineers?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And Tomsky left the boudoir.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta Ivanovna was left alone: she laid aside her work and began to look out of the window. A few moments afterwards, at a corner house on the other side of the street, a young officer appeared. A deep blush covered her cheeks; she took up her work again and bent her head down over the frame. At the same moment the Countess returned completely dressed.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Order the carriage, Lizaveta," said she; "we will go out for a drive."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta arose from the frame and began to arrange her work.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What is the matter with you, my child, are you deaf?" cried the Countess. "Order the carriage to be got ready at once."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I will do so this moment," replied the young lady, hastening into the ante-room.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A servant entered and gave the Countess some books from Prince Paul Aleksandrovich.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Tell him that I am much obliged to him," said the Countess. "Lizaveta! Lizaveta! Where are you running to?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I am going to dress."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"There is plenty of time, my dear. Sit down here. Open the first volume and read to me aloud."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Her companion took the book and read a few lines.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Louder," said the Countess. "What is the matter with you, my child? Have you lost your voice? Wait--give me that footstool--a little nearer--that will do."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta read two more pages. The Countess yawned.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Put the book down," said she: "what a lot of nonsense! Send it back to Prince Paul with my thanks... But where is the carriage?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The carriage is ready," said Lizaveta, looking out into the street.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How is it that you are not dressed?" said the Countess: "I must always wait for you. It is intolerable, my dear!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Liza hastened to her room. She had not been there two minutes, before the Countess began to ring with all her might. The three waiting-maids came running in at one door and the valet at another.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How is it that you cannot hear me when I ring for you?" said the Countess. "Tell Lizaveta Ivanovna that I am waiting for her."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta returned with her hat and cloak on.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"At last you are here!" said the Countess. "But why such an elaborate toilette? Whom do you intend to captivate? What sort of weather is it? It seems rather windy."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"No, your Ladyship, it is very calm," replied the valet.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You never think of what you are talking about. Open the window. So it is: windy and bitterly cold. Unharness the horses. Lizaveta, we won't go out--there was no need for you to deck yourself like that."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What a life is mine!" thought Lizaveta Ivanovna.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And, in truth, Lizaveta Ivanovna was a very unfortunate creature. "The bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess A---- had by no means a bad heart, bat she was capricious, like a woman who had been spoilt by the world, as well as being avaricious and egotistical, like all old people who have seen their best days, and whose thoughts are with the past and not the present. She participated in all the vanities of the great world, went to balls, where she sat in a corner, painted and dressed in old-fashioned style, like a deformed but indispensable ornament of the ball-room; all the guests on entering approached her and made a profound bow, as if in accordance with a set ceremony, but after that nobody took any further notice of her. She received the whole town at her house, and observed the strictest etiquette, although she could no longer recognise the faces of people. Her numerous domestics, growing fat and old in her ante-chamber and servants' hall, did just as they liked, and vied with each other in robbing the aged Countess in the most bare-faced manner. Lizaveta Ivanovna was the martyr of the household. She made tea, and was reproached with using too much sugar; she read novels aloud to the Countess, and the faults of the author were visited upon her head; she accompanied the Countess in her walks, and was held answerable for the weather or the state of the pavement. A salary was attached to the post, but she very rarely received it, although she was expected to dress like everybody else, that is to say, like very few indeed. In society she played the most pitiable role. Everybody knew her, and nobody paid her any attention. At balls she danced only when a partner was wanted, and ladies would only take hold of her arm when it was necessary to lead her out of the room to attend to their dresses. She was very self-conscious, and felt her position keenly, and she looked about her with impatience for a deliverer to come to her rescue; but the young men, calculating in their giddiness, honoured her with but very little attention, although Lizaveta Ivanovna was a hundred times prettier than the bare-faced and cold-hearted marriageable girls around whom they hovered. Many a time did she quietly slink away from the glittering but wearisome drawing-room, to go and cry in her own poor little room, in which stood a screen, a chest of drawers, a looking-glass and a painted bedstead, and where a tallow candle burnt feebly in a copper candle-stick.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>One morning--this was about two days after the evening party described at the beginning of this story, and a week previous to the scene at which we have just assisted--Lizaveta Ivanovna was seated near the window at her embroidery frame, when, happening to look out into the street, she caught sight of a young Engineer officer, standing motionless with his eyes fixed upon her window. She lowered her head and went on again with her work. About five minutes afterwards she looked out again--the young officer was still standing in the same place. Not being in the habit of coquetting with passing officers, she did not continue to gaze out into the street, but went on sewing for a couple of hours, without raising her head. Dinner was announced. She rose up and began to put her embroidery away, but glancing casually out of the window, she perceived the officer again. This seemed to her very strange. After dinner she went to the window with a certain feeling of uneasiness, but the officer was no longer there--and she thought no more about him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A couple of days afterwards, just as she was stepping into the carriage with the Countess, she saw him again. He was standing close behind the door, with his face half-concealed by his fur collar, but his dark eyes sparkled beneath his cap. Lizaveta felt alarmed, though she knew not why, and she trembled as she seated herself in the carriage.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>On returning home, she hastened to the window--the officer was standing in his accustomed place, with his eyes fixed upon her. She drew back, a prey to curiosity and agitated by a feeling which was quite new to her.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>From that time forward not a day passed without the young officer making his appearance under the window at the customary hour, and between him and her there was established a sort of mute acquaintance. Sitting in her place at work, she used to feel his approach; and raising her head, she would look at him longer and longer each day. The young man seemed to be very grateful to her: she saw with the sharp eye of youth, how a sudden flush covered his pale cheeks each time that their glances met. After about a week she commenced to smile at him...</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When Tomsky asked permission of his grandmother the Countess to present one of his friends to her, the young girl's heart beat violently. But hearing that Narumov was not an Engineer, she regretted that by her thoughtless question, she had betrayed her secret to the volatile Tomsky.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann was the son of a German who had become a naturalised Russian, and from whom he had inherited a small capital. Being firmly convinced of the necessity of preserving his independence, Hermann did not touch his private income, but lived on his pay, without allowing himself the slightest luxury. Moreover, he was reserved and ambitious, and his companions rarely had an opportunity of making merry at the expense of his extreme parsimony. He had strong passions and an ardent imagination, but his firmness of disposition preserved him from the ordinary errors of young men. Thus, though a gamester at heart, he never touched a card, for he considered his position did not allow him--as he said--"to risk the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous," yet he would sit for nights together at the card table and follow with feverish anxiety the different turns of the game.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The story of the three cards had produced a powerful impression upon his imagination, and all night long he could think of nothing else. "If," he thought to himself the following evening, as he walked along the streets of St. Petersburg, "if the old Countess would but reveal her secret to me! if she would only tell me the names of the three winning cards. Why should I not try my fortune? I must get introduced to her and win her favour--become her lover... But all that will take time, and she is eighty-seven years old: she might be dead in a week, in a couple of days even!... But the story itself: can it really be true?... No! Economy, temperance and industry: those are my three winning cards; by means of them I shall be able to double my capital--increase it sevenfold, and procure for myself ease and independence."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Musing in this manner, he walked on until he found himself in one of the principal streets of St. Petersburg, in front of a house of antiquated architecture. The street was blocked with equipages; carriages one after the other drew up in front of the brilliantly illuminated doorway. At one moment there stepped out on to the pavement the well-shaped little foot of some young beauty, at another the heavy boot of a cavalry officer, and then the silk stockings and shoes of a member of the diplomatic world. Furs and cloaks passed in rapid succession before the gigantic porter at the entrance.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann stopped. "Who's house is this?" he asked of the watchman at the corner.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The Countess A----'s," replied the watchman.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann started. The strange story of the three cards again presented itself to his imagination. He began walking up and down before the house, thinking of its owner and her strange secret. Returning late to his modest lodging, he could not go to sleep for a long time, and when at last he did doze off, he could dream of nothing but cards, green tables, piles of banknotes and heaps of ducats. He played one card after the other, winning uninterruptedly, and then he gathered up the gold and filled his pockets with the notes. When he woke up late the next morning, be sighed over the loss of his imaginary wealth, and then sallying out into the town, he found himself once more in front of the Countess's residence. Some unknown power seemed to have attracted him thither. He stopped and looked up at the windows. At one of these he saw a head with luxuriant black hair, which was bent down probably over some book or an embroidery frame. The head was raised. Hermann saw a fresh complexion and a pair of dark eyes. That moment decided his fate.</div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">III</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta Ivanovna had scarcely taken off her hat and cloak, when the Countess sent for her and again ordered her to get the carriage ready. The vehicle drew up before the door, and they prepared to take their seats. Just at the moment when two footmen were assisting the old lady to enter the carriage, Lizaveta saw her Engineer standing close beside the wheel; he grasped her hand; alarm caused her to lose her presence of mind, and the young man disappeared--but not before he had left a letter between her fingers. She concealed it in her glove, and during the whole of the drive she neither saw nor heard anything. It was the custom of the Countess, when out for an airing in her carriage, to be constantly asking such questions as: "Who was that person that met us just now? What is the name of this bridge? What is written on that signboard?" On this occasion, however, Lizaveta returned such vague and absurd answers, that the Countess became angry with her.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she exclaimed. "Have you taken leave of your senses, or what is it? Do you not hear me or understand what I say?... Heaven be thanked, I am still in my right mind and speak plainly enough!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta Ivanovna did not hear her. On returning home she ran to her room, and drew the letter out of her glove: it was not sealed. Lizaveta read it. The letter contained a declaration of love; it was tender, respectful, and copied word for word from a German novel. But Lizaveta did not know anything of the German language, and she was quite delighted.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>For all that, the letter caused her to feel exceedingly uneasy. For the first time in her life she was entering into secret and confidential relations with a young man. His boldness alarmed her. She reproached herself for her imprudent behaviour, and knew not what to do. Should she cease to sit at the window and, by assuming an appearance of indifference towards him, put a check upon the young officer's desire for further acquaintance with her? Should she send his letter back to him, or should she answer him in a cold and decided manner? There was nobody to whom she could turn in her perplexity, for she had neither female friend nor adviser... At length she resolved to reply to him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>She sat down at her little writing-table, took pen and paper, and began to think. Several times she began her letter, and then tore it up: the way she had expressed herself seemed to her either too inviting or too cold and decisive. At last she succeeded in writing a few lines with which she felt satisfied.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I am convinced," she wrote, "that your intentions are honourable, and that you do not wish to offend me by any imprudent behaviour, but our acquaintance must not begin in such a manner. I return you your letter, and I hope that I shall never have any cause to complain of this undeserved slight."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The next day, as soon as Hermann made his appearance, Lizaveta rose from her embroidery, went into the drawing-room, opened the ventilator and threw the letter into the street, trusting that the young officer would have the perception to pick it up.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann hastened forward, picked it up and then repaired to a confectioner's shop. Breaking the seal of the envelope, he found inside it his own letter and Lizaveta's reply. He had expected this, and he returned home, his mind deeply occupied with his intrigue.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Three days afterwards, a bright-eyed young girl from a milliner's establishment brought Lizaveta a letter. Lizaveta opened it with great uneasiness, fearing that it was a demand for money, when suddenly she recognised Hermann's hand-writing.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You have made a mistake, my dear," said she: "this letter is not for me."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Oh, yes, it is for you," replied the girl, smiling very knowingly. "Have the goodness to read it."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta glanced at the letter. Hermann requested an interview.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"It cannot be," she cried, alarmed at the audacious request, and the manner in which it was made. "This letter is certainly not for me."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And she tore it into fragments.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"If the letter was not for you, why have you torn it up?" said the girl. "I should have given it back to the person who sent it."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Be good enough, my dear," said Lizaveta, disconcerted by this remark, "not to bring me any more letters for the future, and tell the person who sent you that he ought to be ashamed..."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>But Hermann was not the man to be thus put off. Every day Lizaveta received from him a letter, sent now in this way, now in that. They were no longer translated from the German. Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination. Lizaveta no longer thought of sending them back to him: she became intoxicated with them and began to reply to them, and little by little her answers became longer and more affectionate. At last she threw out of the window to him the following letter:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"This evening there is going to be a ball at the Embassy. The Countess will be there. We shall remain until two o'clock. You have now an opportunity of seeing me alone. As soon as the Countess is gone, the servants will very probably go out, and there will be nobody left but the Swiss, but he usually goes to sleep in his lodge. Come about half-past eleven. Walk straight upstairs. If you meet anybody in the ante-room, ask if the Countess is at home. You will be told 'No,' in which case there will be nothing left for you to do but to go away again. But it is most probable that you will meet nobody. The maidservants will all be together in one room. On leaving the ante-room, turn to the left, and walk straight on until you reach the Countess's bedroom. In the bedroom, behind a screen, you will find two doors: the one on the right leads to a cabinet, which the Countess never enters; the one on the left leads to a corridor, at the end of which is a little winding staircase; this leads to my room."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann trembled like a tiger, as he waited for the appointed time to arrive. At ten o'clock in the evening he was already in front of the Countess's house. The weather was terrible; the wind blew with great violence; the sleety snow fell in large flakes; the lamps emitted a feeble light, the streets were deserted; from time to time a sledge, drawn by a sorry-looking hack, passed by, on the look-out for a belated passenger. Hermann was enveloped in a thick overcoat, and felt neither wind nor snow.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At last the Countess's carriage drew up. Hermann saw two footmen carry out in their arms the bent form of the old lady, wrapped in sable fur, and immediately behind her, clad in a warm mantle, and with her head ornamented with a wreath of fresh flowers, followed Lizaveta. The door was closed. The carriage rolled away heavily through the yielding snow. The porter shut the street-door; the windows became dark.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann began walking up and down near the deserted house; at length he stopped under a lamp, and glanced at his watch: it was twenty minutes past eleven. He remained standing under the lamp, his eyes fixed upon the watch, impatiently waiting for the remaining minutes to pass. At half-past eleven precisely, Hermann ascended the steps of the house, and made his way into the brightly-illuminated vestibule. The porter was not there. Hermann hastily ascended the staircase, opened the door of the ante-room and saw a footman sitting asleep in an antique chair by the side of a lamp. With a light firm step Hermann passed by him. The drawing-room and dining-room were in darkness, but a feeble reflection penetrated thither from the lamp in the ante-room.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann reached the Countess's bedroom. Before a shrine, which was full of old images, a golden lamp was burning. Faded stuffed chairs and divans with soft cushions stood in melancholy symmetry around the room, the walls of which were hung with China silk. On one side of the room hung two portraits painted in Paris by Madame Lebrun. One of these represented a stout, red-faced man of about forty years of age in a bright-green uniform and with a star upon his breast; the other--a beautiful young woman, with an aquiline nose, forehead curls and a rose in her powdered hair. In the corners stood porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses, dining-room clocks from the workshop of the celebrated Lefroy, bandboxes, roulettes, fans and the various playthings for the amusement of ladies that were in vogue at the end of the last century, when Montgolfier's balloons and Mesmer's magnetism were the rage. Hermann stepped behind the screen. At the back of it stood a little iron bedstead; on the right was the door which led to the cabinet; on the left--the other which led to the corridor. He opened the latter, and saw the little winding staircase which led to the room of the poor companion... But he retraced his steps and entered the dark cabinet.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The time passed slowly. All was still. The clock in the drawing-room struck twelve; the strokes echoed through the room one after the other, and everything was quiet again. Hermann stood leaning against the cold stove. He was calm; his heart beat regularly, like that of a man resolved upon a dangerous but inevitable undertaking. One o'clock in the morning struck; then two; and he heard the distant noise of carriage-wheels. An involuntary agitation took possession of him. The carriage drew near and stopped. He heard the sound of the carriage-steps being let down. All was bustle within the house. The servants were running hither and thither, there was a confusion of voices, and the rooms were lit up. Three antiquated chamber-maids entered the bedroom, and they were shortly afterwards followed by the Countess who, more dead than alive, sank into a Voltaire armchair. Hermann peeped through a chink. Lizaveta Ivanovna passed close by him, and he heard her hurried steps as she hastened up the little spiral staircase. For a moment his heart was assailed by something like a pricking of conscience, but the emotion was only transitory, and his heart became petrified as before.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The Countess began to undress before her looking-glass. Her rose-bedecked cap was taken off, and then her powdered wig was removed from off her white and closely-cut hair. Hairpins fell in showers around her. Her yellow satin dress, brocaded with silver, fell down at her swollen feet.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann was a witness of the repugnant mysteries of her toilette; at last the Countess was in her night-cap and dressing-gown, and in this costume, more suitable to her age, she appeared less hideous and deformed.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Like all old people in general, the Countess suffered from sleeplessness. Having undressed, she seated herself at the window in a Voltaire armchair and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was produced by the action of some concealed galvanic mechanism.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Suddenly the death-like face assumed an inexplicable expression. The lips ceased to tremble, the eyes became animated: before the Countess stood an unknown man.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Do not be alarmed, for Heaven's sake, do not be alarmed!" said he in a low but distinct voice. "I have no intention of doing you any harm, I have only come to ask a favour of you."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The old woman looked at him in silence, as if she had not heard what he had said. Hermann thought that she was deaf, and bending down towards her ear, he repeated what he had said. The aged Countess remained silent as before.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You can insure the happiness of my life," continued Hermann, "and it will cost you nothing. I know that you can name three cards in order--"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann stopped. The Countess appeared now to understand what he wanted; she seemed as if seeking for words to reply.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"It was a joke," she replied at last: "I assure you it was only a joke."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"There is no joking about the matter," replied Hermann angrily. "Remember Chaplitzky, whom you helped to win."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The Countess became visibly uneasy. Her features expressed strong emotion, but they quickly resumed their former immobility.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Can you not name me these three winning cards?" continued Hermann.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The Countess remained silent; Hermann continued:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"For whom are you preserving your secret? For your grandsons? They are rich enough without it; they do not know the worth of money. Your cards would be of no use to a spendthrift. He who cannot preserve his paternal inheritance, will die in want, even though he had a demon at his service. I am not a man of that sort; I know the value of money. Your three cards will not be thrown away upon me. Come!"...</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He paused and tremblingly awaited her reply. The Countess remained silent; Hermann fell upon his knees.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"If your heart has ever known the feeling of love," said he, "if you remember its rapture, if you have ever smiled at the cry of your new-born child, if any human feeling has ever entered into your breast, I entreat you by the feelings of a wife, a lover, a mother, by all that is most sacred in life, not to reject my prayer. Reveal to me your secret. Of what use is it to you?... May be it is connected with some terrible sin with the loss of eternal salvation, with some bargain with the devil... Reflect,--you are old; you have not long to live--I am ready to take your sins upon my soul. Only reveal to me your secret. Remember that the happiness of a man is in your hands, that not only I, but my children, and grandchildren will bless your memory and reverence you as a saint..."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The old Countess answered not a word.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann rose to his feet.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You old hag!" he exclaimed, grinding his teeth, "then I will make you answer!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>With these words he drew a pistol from his pocket.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At the sight of the pistol, the Countess for the second time exhibited strong emotion. She shook her head and raised her hands as if to protect herself from the shot... then she fell backwards and remained motionless.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Come, an end to this childish nonsense!" said Hermann, taking hold of her hand. "I ask you for the last time: will you tell me the names of your three cards, or will you not?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The Countess made no reply. Hermann perceived that she was dead!</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">IV</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta Ivanovna was sitting in her room, still in her ball dress, lost in deep thought. On returning home, she had hastily dismissed the chambermaid who very reluctantly came forward to assist her, saying that she would undress herself, and with a trembling heart had gone up to her own room, expecting to find Hermann there, but yet hoping not to find him. At the first glance she convinced herself that he was not there, and she thanked her fate for having prevented him keeping the appointment. She sat down without undressing, and began to recall to mind all the circumstances which in so short a time had carried her so far. It was not three weeks since the time when she first saw the young officer from the window--and yet she was already in correspondence with him, and he had succeeded in inducing her to grant him a nocturnal interview! She knew his name only through his having written it at the bottom of some of his letters; she had never spoken to him, had never heard his voice, and had never heard him spoken of until that evening. But, strange to say, that very evening at the ball, Tomsky, being piqued with the young Princess Pauline N----, who, contrary to her usual custom, did not flirt with him, wished to revenge himself by assuming an air of indifference: he therefore engaged Lizaveta Ivanovna and danced an endless mazurka with her. During the whole of the time he kept teasing her about her partiality for Engineer officers; he assured her that he knew far more than she imagined, and some of his jests were so happily aimed, that Lizaveta thought several times that her secret was known to him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"From whom have you learnt all this?" she asked, smiling.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"From a friend of a person very well known to you," replied Tomsky, "from a very distinguished man."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And who is this distinguished man?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"His name is Hermann."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta made no reply; but her hands and feet lost all sense of feeling.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"This Hermann," continued Tomsky, "is a man of romantic personality. He has the profile of a Napoleon, and the soul of a Mephistopheles. I believe that he has at least three crimes upon his conscience... How pale you have become!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I have a headache... But what did this Hermann--or whatever his name is--tell you?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Hermann is very much dissatisfied with his friend: he says that in his place he would act very differently... I even think that Hermann himself has designs upon you; at least, he listens very attentively to all that his friend has to say about you."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And where has he seen me?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"In church, perhaps; or on the parade--God alone knows where. It may have been in your room, while you were asleep, for there is nothing that he--"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Three ladies approaching him with the question: "_oubli ou regret_?" interrupted the conversation, which had become so tantalisingly interesting to Lizaveta.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The lady chosen by Tomsky was the Princess Pauline herself. She succeeded in effecting a reconciliation with him during the numerous turns of the dance, after which he conducted her to her chair. On returning to his place, Tomsky thought no more either of Hermann or Lizaveta. She longed to renew the interrupted conversation, but the mazurka came to an end, and shortly afterwards the old Countess took her departure.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tomsky's words were nothing more than the customary small talk of the dance, but they sank deep into the soul of the young dreamer. The portrait, sketched by Tomsky, coincided with the picture she had formed within her own mind, and thanks to the latest romances, the ordinary countenance of her admirer became invested with attributes capable of alarming her and fascinating her imagination at the same time. She was now sitting with her bare arms crossed and with her head, still adorned with flowers, sunk upon her uncovered bosom. Suddenly the door opened and Hermann entered. She shuddered.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Where were you?" she asked in a terrified whisper.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"In the old Countess's bedroom," replied Hermann: "I have just left her. The Countess is dead."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"My God! What do you say?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And I am afraid," added Hermann, "that I am the cause of her death."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta looked at him, and Tomsky's words found an echo in her soul: "This man has at least three crimes upon his conscience!" Hermann sat down by the window near her, and related all that had happened.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta listened to him in terror. So all those passionate letters, those ardent desires, this bold obstinate pursuit--all this was not love! Money--that was what his soul yearned for! She could not satisfy his desire and make him, happy I The poor girl had been nothing but the blind tool of a robber, of the murderer of her aged benefactress!... She wept bitter tears of agonised repentance. Hermann gazed at her in silence: his heart, too, was a prey to violent emotion, but neither the tears of the poor girl, nor the wonderful charm of her beauty, enhanced by her grief, could produce any impression upon his hardened soul. He felt no pricking of conscience at the thought of the dead old woman. One thing only grieved him: the irreparable loss of the secret from which he had expected to obtain great wealth.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You are a monster!" said Lizaveta at last.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I did not wish for her death," replied Hermann: "my pistol was not loaded."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Both remained silent.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The day began to dawn. Lizaveta extinguished her candle: a pale light illumined her room. She wiped her tear-stained eyes and raised them towards Hermann: he was sitting near the window, with his arms crossed and with a fierce frown upon his forehead. In this attitude he bore a striking resemblance to the portrait of Napoleon. This resemblance struck Lizaveta even.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How shall I get you out of the house?" said she at last. "I thought of conducting you down the secret staircase, but in that case it would be necessary to go through the Countess's bedroom, and I am afraid."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Tell me how to find this secret staircase--I will go alone."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta arose, took from her drawer a key, handed it to Hermann and gave him the necessary instructions. Hermann pressed her cold, limp hand, kissed her bowed head, and left the room.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He descended the winding staircase, and once more entered the Countess's bedroom. The dead old lady sat as if petrified; her face expressed profound tranquillity. Hermann stopped before her, and gazed long and earnestly at her, as if he wished to convince himself of the terrible reality; at last he entered the cabinet, felt behind the tapestry for the door, and then began to descend the dark staircase, filled with strange emotions. "Down this very staircase," thought he, "perhaps coming from the very same room, and at this very same hour sixty years ago, there may have glided, in an embroidered coat, with his hair dressed _à l'oiseau royal_ and pressing to his heart his three-cornered hat, some young gallant, who has long been mouldering in the grave, but the heart of his aged mistress has only to-day ceased to beat..."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At the bottom of the staircase Hermann found a door, which he opened with a key, and then traversed a corridor which conducted him into the street.</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">V</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Three days after the fatal night, at nine o'clock in the morning, Hermann repaired to the Convent of ----, where the last honours were to be paid to the mortal remains of the old Countess. Although feeling no remorse, he could not altogether stifle the voice of conscience, which said to him: "You are the murderer of the old woman!" In spite of his entertaining very little religious belief, he was exceedingly superstitious; and believing that the dead Countess might exercise an evil influence on his life, he resolved to be present at her obsequies in order to implore her pardon.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The church was full. It was with difficulty that Hermann made his way through the crowd of people. The coffin was placed upon a rich catafalque beneath a velvet baldachin. The deceased Countess lay within it, with her hands crossed upon her breast, with a lace cap upon her head and dressed in a white satin robe. Around the catafalque stood the members of her household: the servants in black _caftans_, with armorial ribbons upon their shoulders, and candles in their hands; the relatives--children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren--in deep mourning.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Nobody wept; tears would have been _une affectation_. The Countess was so old, that her death could have surprised nobody, and her relatives had long looked upon her as being out of the world. A famous preacher pronounced the funeral sermon. In simple and touching words he described the peaceful passing away of the righteous, who had passed long years in calm preparation for a Christian end. "The angel of death found her," said the orator, "engaged in pious meditation and waiting for the midnight bridegroom."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The service concluded amidst profound silence. The relatives went forward first to take farewell of the corpse. Then followed the numerous guests, who had come to render the last homage to her who for so many years had been a participator in their frivolous amusements. After these followed the members of the Countess's household. The last of these was an old woman of the same age as the deceased. Two young women led her forward by the hand. She had not strength enough to bow down to the ground--she merely shed a few tears and kissed the cold hand of her mistress.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann now resolved to approach the coffin. He knelt down upon the cold stones and remained in that position for some minutes; at last he arose, as pale as the deceased Countess herself; he ascended the steps of the catafalque and bent over the corpse... At that moment it seemed to him that the dead woman darted a mocking look at him and winked with one eye. Hermann started back, took a false step and fell to the ground. Several persons hurried forward and raised him up. At the same moment Lizaveta Ivanovna was borne fainting into the porch of the church. This episode disturbed for some minutes the solemnity of the gloomy ceremony. Among the congregation arose a deep murmur, and a tall thin chamberlain, a near relative of the deceased, whispered in the ear of an Englishman who was standing near him, that the young officer was a natural son of the Countess, to which the Englishman coldly replied: "Oh!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>During the whole of that day, Hermann was strangely excited. Repairing to an out-of-the-way restaurant to dine, he drank a great deal of wine, contrary to his usual custom, in the hope of deadening his inward agitation. But the wine only served to excite his imagination still more. On returning home, he threw himself upon his bed without undressing, and fell into a deep sleep.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When he woke up it was already night, and the moon was shining into the room. He looked at his watch: it was a quarter to three. Sleep had left him; he sat down upon his bed and thought of the funeral of the old Countess.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At that moment somebody in the street looked in at his window, and immediately passed on again. Hermann paid no attention to this incident. A few moments afterwards he heard the door of his ante-room open. Hermann thought that it was his orderly, drunk as usual, returning from some nocturnal expedition, but presently he heard footsteps that were unknown to him: somebody was walking softly over the floor in slippers. The door opened, and a woman dressed in white, entered the room. Hermann mistook her for his old nurse, and wondered what could bring her there at that hour of the night. But the white woman glided rapidly across the room and stood before him--and Hermann recognised the Countess!</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I have come to you against my wish," she said in a firm voice: "but I have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win for you if played in succession, but only on these conditions: that you do not play more than one card in twenty-four hours, and that you never play again during the rest of your life. I forgive you my death, on condition that you marry my companion, Lizaveta Ivanovna."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>With these words she turned round very quietly, walked with a shuffling gait towards the door and disappeared. Hermann heard the street-door open and shut, and again he saw some one look in at him through the window.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>For a long time Hermann could not recover himself. He then rose up and entered the next room. His orderly was lying asleep upon the floor, and he had much difficulty in waking him. The orderly was drunk as usual, and no information could be obtained from him. The street-door was locked. Hermann returned to his room, lit his candle, and wrote down all the details of his vision.</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">VI</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world. "Three, seven, ace," soon drove out of Hermann's mind the thought of the dead Countess. "Three, seven, ace," were perpetually running through his head and continually being repeated by his lips. If he saw a young girl, he would say: "How slender she is! quite like the three of hearts." If anybody asked: "What is the time?" he would reply: "Five minutes to seven." Every stout man that he saw reminded him of the ace. "Three, seven, ace" haunted him in his sleep, and assumed all possible shapes. The threes bloomed before him in the forms of magnificent flowers, the sevens were represented by Gothic portals, and the aces became transformed into gigantic spiders. One thought alone occupied his whole mind--to make a profitable use of the secret which he had purchased so dearly. He thought of applying for a furlough so as to travel abroad. He wanted to go to Paris and tempt fortune in some of the public gambling-houses that abounded there. Chance spared him all this trouble.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There was in Moscow a society of rich gamesters, presided over by the celebrated Chekalinsky, who had passed all his life at the card-table and had amassed millions, accepting bills of exchange for his winnings and paying his losses in ready money. His long experience secured for him the confidence of his companions, and his open house, his famous cook, and his agreeable and fascinating manners gained for him the respect of the public. He came to St. Petersburg. The young men of the capital flocked to his rooms, forgetting balls for cards, and preferring the emotions of faro to the seductions of flirting. Narumov conducted Hermann to Chekalinsky's residence.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>They passed through a suite of magnificent rooms, filled with attentive domestics. The place was crowded. Generals and Privy Counsellors were playing at whist; young men were lolling carelessly upon the velvet-covered sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes. In the drawing-room, at the head of a long table, around which were assembled about a score of players, sat the master of the house keeping the bank. He was a man of about sixty years of age, of a very dignified appearance; his head was covered with silvery-white hair; his full, florid countenance expressed good-nature, and his eyes twinkled with a perpetual smile. Narumov introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook him by the hand in a friendly manner, requested him not to stand on ceremony, and then went on dealing.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The game occupied some time. On the table lay more than thirty cards. Chekalinsky paused after each throw, in order to give the players time to arrange their cards and note down their losses, listened politely to their requests, and more politely still, put straight the corners of cards that some player's hand had chanced to bend. At last the game was finished. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards and prepared to deal again.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Will you allow me to take a card?" said Hermann, stretching out his hand from behind a stout gentleman who was punting.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chekalinsky smiled and bowed silently, as a sign of acquiescence. Narumov laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and wished him a lucky beginning.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Stake!" said Hermann, writing some figures with chalk on the back of his card.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"How much?" asked the banker, contracting the muscles of his eyes; "excuse me, I cannot see quite clearly."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Forty-seven thousand rubles," replied Hermann.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At these words every head in the room turned suddenly round, and all eyes were fixed upon Hermann.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"He has taken leave of his senses!" thought Narumov.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Allow me to inform you," said Chekalinsky, with his eternal smile, "that you are playing very high; nobody here has ever staked more than two hundred and seventy-five rubles at once."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Very well," replied Hermann; "but do you accept my card or not?"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chekalinsky bowed in token of consent.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I only wish to observe," said he, "that although I have the greatest confidence in my friends, I can only play against ready money. For my own part, I am quite convinced that your word is sufficient, but for the sake of the order of the game, and to facilitate the reckoning up, I must ask you to put the money on your card."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann drew from his pocket a bank-note and handed it to Chekalinsky, who, after examining it in a cursory manner, placed it on Hermann's card.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He began to deal. On the right a nine turned up, and on the left a three.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I have won!" said Hermann, showing his card.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A murmur of astonishment arose among the players. Chekalinsky frowned, but the smile quickly returned to his face.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Do you wish me to settle with you?" he said to Hermann.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"If you please," replied the latter.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chekalinsky drew from his pocket a number of banknotes and paid at once. Hermann took up his money and left the table. Narumov could not recover from his astonishment. Hermann drank a glass of lemonade and returned home.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The next evening he again repaired to Chekalinsky's. The host was dealing. Hermann walked up to the table; the punters immediately made room for him. Chekalinsky greeted him with a gracious bow.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann waited for the next deal, took a card and placed upon it his forty-seven thousand roubles, together with his winnings of the previous evening.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chekalinsky began to deal. A knave turned up on the right, a seven on the left.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann showed his seven.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There was a general exclamation. Chekalinsky was evidently ill at ease, but he counted out the ninety-four thousand rubles and handed them over to Hermann, who pocketed them in the coolest manner possible and immediately left the house.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The next evening Hermann appeared again at the table. Every one was expecting him. The generals and Privy Counsellors left their whist in order to watch such extraordinary play. The young officers quitted their sofas, and even the servants crowded into the room. All pressed round Hermann. The other players left off punting, impatient to see how it would end. Hermann stood at the table and prepared to play alone against the pale, but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each opened a pack of cards. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann took a card and covered it with a pile of bank-notes. It was like a duel. Deep silence reigned around.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chekalinsky began to deal; his hands trembled. On the right a queen turned up, and on the left an ace.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Ace has won!" cried Hermann, showing his card.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, politely.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann started; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of spades! He could not believe his eyes, nor could he understand how he had made such a mistake.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades smiled ironically and winked her eye at him. He was struck by her remarkable resemblance...</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"The old Countess!" he exclaimed, seized with terror.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Chekalinsky gathered up his winnings. For some time, Hermann remained perfectly motionless. When at last he left the table, there was a general commotion in the room.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Splendidly punted!" said the players. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards afresh, and the game went on as usual.</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">*****</div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Hermann went out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of the Obukhov Hospital. He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unusual rapidity: "Three, seven, ace!" "Three, seven, queen!"</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very amiable young man, a son of the former steward of the old Countess. He is in the service of the State somewhere, and is in receipt of a good income. Lizaveta is also supporting a poor relative.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Tomsky has been promoted to the rank of captain, and has become the husband of the Princess Pauline.</div></div><div><br /></div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-55507400158526693762009-03-26T06:14:00.001-07:002009-03-26T06:14:52.826-07:00The Shape of the Sword<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Jorge Luis Borges<br /></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A spiteful scar crossed his face: an ash-colored and nearly perfect arc that creased his temple at one tip and his cheek at the other. His real name is of no importance; everyone in Tacuarembo called him the "Englishman from La Colorada." Cardoso, the owner of those fields, refused to sell them: I understand that the Englishman resorted to an unexpected argument: he confided to Cardoso the secret of the scar. The Englishman came from the border, from Rio Grande del Sur; there are many who say that in Brazil he had been a smuggler. The fields were overgrown with grass, the waterholes brackish; the Englishman, in order to correct those deficiencies, worked fully as hard as his laborers. They say that he was severe to the point of cruelty, but scrupulously just. They say also that he drank: a few times a year he locked himself into an upper room, not to emerge until two or three days later as if from a battle or from vertigo, pale, trembling, confused and as authoritarian as ever. I remember the glacial eyes, the energetic leanness, the gray mustache. He had no dealings with anyone; it is a fact that his Spanish was rudimentary and cluttered with Brazilian. Aside from a business letter or some pamphlet, he received no mail.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The last time I passed through the northern provinces, a sudden overflowing of the Caraguatá stream compelled me to spend the night at La Colorada. Within a few moments, I seemed to sense that my appearance was inopportune; I tried to ingratiate myself with the Englishman; I resorted to the least discerning of passions: patriotism. I claimed as invincible a country with such spirit as England's. My companion agreed, but added with a smile that he was not English. He was Irish, from Dungarvan. Having said this, he stopped short, as if he had revealed a secret. After dinner we went outside to look at the sky. It had cleared up, but beyond the low hills the southern sky, streaked and gashed by lightning, was conceiving another storm. Into the cleared up dining room the boy who had served dinner brought a bottle of rum. We drank for some time, in silence.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I don't know what time it must have been when I observed that I was drunk; I don't know what inspiration or what exultation or tedium made me mention the scar. The Englishman's face changed its expression; for a few seconds I thought he was going to throw me out of the house. At length he said in his normal voice:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I'll tell you the history of my scar under one condition: that of not mitigating one bit of the opprobrium, of the infamous circumstances."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I agreed. This is the story that he told me, mixing his English with Spanish, and even with Portuguese:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Around 1922, in one of the cities of Connaught, I was one of the many who were conspiring for the independence of Ireland. Of my comrades, some are still living, dedicated to peaceful pursuits; others, paradoxically, are fighting on desert and sea under the English flag; another, the most worthy, died in the courtyard of a barracks, at dawn, shot by men filled with sleep; still others (not the most unfortunate) met their destiny in the anonymous and almost secret battles of the civil war. We were Republicans, Catholics; we were, I suspect, Romantics. Ireland was for us not only the Utopian future and the intolerable present; it was a bitter and cherished mythology, it was the circular towers and the red marshes, it was the repudiation of Parnell and the enormous epic poems which sang of the robbing of bulls which in another incarnation were heroes and in others fish and mountains. . . One afternoon I will never forget, an affiliate from Munster joined us: one John Vincent Moon.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"He was scarcely twenty years old. He was slender and flaccid at the same time; he gave the uncomfortable impression of being invertebrate. He had studied with fervor and with vanity nearly every page of Lord knows what Communist manual; he made use of dialectical materialism to put an end to any discussion whatever. The reasons one can have for hating another man, or for loving him, are infinite: Moon reduced the history of the universe to a sordid economic conflict. He affirmed that the revolution was predestined to succeed. I told him that for a gentleman only lost causes should be attractive. . . Night had already fallen; we continued our disagreement in the hall, on the stairs, then along the vague streets. The judgments Moon emitted impressed me less than his irrefutable, apodictic note. The new comrade did not discuss: he dictated opinions with scorn and with a certain anger.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"As we were arriving at the outlying houses, a sudden burst of gunfire stunned us. (Either before or afterwards we skirted the blank wall of a factory or barracks.) We moved into an unpaved street; a soldier, huge in the firelight, came out of a burning hut. Crying out, he ordered us to stop. I quickened my pace; my companion did not follow. I turned around: John Vincent Moon was motionless, fascinated, as if eternized by fear. I then ran back and knocked the soldier to the ground with one blow, shook Vincent Moon, insulted him and ordered him to follow. I had to take him by the arm; the passion of fear had rendered him helpless. We fled, into the night pierced by flames. A rifle volley reached out for us, and a bullet nicked Moon's right shoulder; as we were fleeing amid pines, he broke out in weak sobbing.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"In that fall of 1923 I had taken shelter in General Berkeley's country house. The general (whom I had never seen) was carrying out some administrative assignment or other in Bengal; the house was less than a century old, but it was decayed and shadowy and flourished in puzzling corridors and in pointless antechambers. The museum and the huge library usurped the first floor: controversial and uncongenial books which in some manner are the history of the nineteenth century; scimitars frorn Nishapur, along whose captured arcs there seemed to persist still the wind and violence of battle. We entered (I seem to recall) through the rear. Moon, trembling, his mouth parched, murmured that the events of the night were interesting; I dressed his wound and brought him a cup of tea; I was able to determine that his 'wound' was superficial. Suddenly he stammered in bewilderment:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>" 'You know, you ran a terrible risk.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"I told him not to worry about it. (The habit of the civil war had incited me to act as I did; besides, the capture of a single member could endanger our cause.)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"By the following day Moon had recovered his poise. He accepted a cigarette and subjected me to a severe interrogation on the 'economic resources of our revolutionary party.' His questions were very lucid; I told him (truthfully) that the situation was serious. Deep bursts of rifle fire agitated the south. I told Moon our comrades were waiting for us. My overcoat and my revolver were in my room; when I returned, I found Moon stretched out on the sofa, his eyes closed. He imagined he had a fever; he invoked a painful spasm in his shoulder.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"At that moment I understood that his cowardice was irreparable. I clumsily entreated him to take care of himself and went out. This frightened man mortified me, as if I were the coward, not Vincent Moon. Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it. Perhaps Schopenhauer was right: I am all other men, any man is all men, Shakespeare is in some manner the miserable John Vincent Moon.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Nine days we spent in the general's enormous house. Of the agonies and the successes of the war I shall not speak: I propose to relate the history of the scar that insults me. In my memory, those nine days form only a single day, save for the next to the last, when our men broke into a barracks and we were able to avenge precisely the sixteen comrades who had been machine-gunned in Elphin. I slipped out of the house towards dawn, in the confusion of daybreak. At nightfall I was back. My companion was waiting for me upstairs: his wound did not permit him to descend to the ground floor. I recall him having some volume of strategy in his hand, F. N. Maude or Clausewitz. 'The weapon I prefer is the artillery,' he confessed to me one night. He inquired into our plans; he liked to censure them or revise them. He also was accustomed to denouncing 'our deplorable economic basis'; dogmatic and gloomy, he predicted the disastrous end. 'C'est une affaire flambée,' he murmured. In order to show that he was indifferent to being a physical coward, he magnified his mental arrogance. In this way, for good or for bad, nine days elapsed.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"On the tenth day the city fell definitely to the Black and Tans. Tall, silent horsemen patrolled the roads; ashes and smoke rode on the wind; on the corner I saw a corpse thrown to the ground, an impression less firm in my memory than that of a dummy on which the soldiers endlessly practiced their marksmanship, in the middle of the square. . . I had left when dawn was in the sky; before noon I returned. Moon, in the library, was speaking with someone; the tone of his voice told me he was talking on the telephone. Then I heard my name; then, that I would return at seven; then, the suggestion that they should arrest me as I was crossing the garden. My reasonable friend was reasonably selling me out. I heard him demand guarantees of personal safety.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Here my story is confused and becomes lost. I know that I pursued the informer along the black, nightmarish halls and along deep stairways of dizzyness. Moon knew the house very well, much better than I. One or two times I lost him. I cornered him before the soldiers stopped me. From one of the general's collections of arms I tore a cutlass: with that half moon I carved into his face forever a half moon of blood. Borges, to you, a stranger, I have made this confession. Your contempt does not grieve me so much."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Here the narrator stopped. I noticed that his hands were shaking.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And Moon?" I asked him.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"He collected his Judas money and fled to Brazil. That afternoon, in the square, he saw a dummy shot up by some drunken men."</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I waited in vain for the rest of the story. Finally I told him to go on.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Then a sob went through his body; and with a weak gentleness he pointed to the whitish curved scar.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You don't believe me?" he stammered. "Don't you see that I carry written on my face the mark of my infamy? I have told you the story thus so that you would hear me to the end. I denounced the man who protected me: I am Vincent Moon. Now despise me."</div><div><br /></div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-41431868212117846632009-03-26T06:06:00.000-07:002009-03-26T06:07:10.778-07:00The Purloined Letter<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Edgar Allan Poe<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. - Seneca.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18--, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G--, the Prefect of the Parisian police.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon G.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Dupin, as he forbore to enkindle the wick, "we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable chair.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And what is the difficulty now?" I asked. "Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details of it, because it is so excessively odd."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Simple and odd," said Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault," said my friend.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"A little too self-evident."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Ha! ha! ha! --ha! ha! ha! --ho! ho! ho!" --roared our visitor, profoundly amused, "oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I asked.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. "I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Proceed," said I.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Or not," said Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last importance, has been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still remains in his possession."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How is this known?" asked Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect, "from the nature of the document, and from the nonappearance of certain results which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber's possession; --that is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Be a little more explicit," I said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable." The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopardized."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But this ascendancy," I interposed, "would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Who would dare--"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The thief," said G., is the Minister D--, who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in question --a letter, to be frank --had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, however, was uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the Minister D--. His lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some business transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses, for some fifteen minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention to the act, in the presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister decamped; leaving his own letter --one of no importance --upon the table."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy complete --the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes," replied the Prefect; "and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You flatter me," replied the Prefect; "but it is possible that some such opinion may have been entertained."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power. With the employment the power departs."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"True," said G. "and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search of the minister's hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result from giving him reason to suspect our design."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But," said I, "you are quite au fait in these investigations. The Parisian police have done this thing often before."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently absent from home all night. His servants are by no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from their master's apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the D-- Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is possible that the paper can be concealed."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But is it not possible," I suggested, "that although the letter may be in possession of the minister, as it unquestionably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which D-- is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document --its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice --a point of nearly equal importance with its possession."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Its susceptibility of being produced?" said I.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That is to say, of being destroyed," said Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"True," I observed; "the paper is clearly then upon the premises. As for its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider that as out of the question."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person rigorously searched under my own inspection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Dupin. "D--, I presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of certain doggerel myself."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why the fact is, we took our time, and we searched every where. I have had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire building, room by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each. We examined, first, the furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer; and I presume you know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any man is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There is a certain amount of bulk --of space --to be accounted for in every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs. The cushions we probed with the fine long needles you have seen me employ. From the tables we removed the tops."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why so?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece of furniture, is removed by the person wishing to conceal an article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts are employed in the same way."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I asked.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we were obliged to proceed without noise."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But you could not have removed --you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all the chairs?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Certainly not; but we did better --we examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and, indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glueing --any unusual gaping in the joints --would have sufficed to insure detection."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates, and you probed the beds and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and carpets."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined the house itself. We divided its entire surface into compartments, which we numbered, so that none might be missed; then we scrutinized each individual square inch throughout the premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as before."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed; "you must have had a great deal of trouble."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We had; but the reward offered is prodigious.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You include the grounds about the houses?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it undisturbed."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You looked among D--'s papers, of course, and into the books of the library?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume, not contenting ourselves with a mere shake, according to the fashion of some of our police officers. We also measured the thickness of every book-cover, with the most accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope. Had any of the bindings been recently meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fact should have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with the needles."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You explored the floors beneath the carpets?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and examined the boards with the microscope."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And the paper on the walls?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You looked into the cellars?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We did."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Then," I said, "you have been making a miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the premises, as you suppose.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I fear you are right there," said the Prefect. "And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to do?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"To make a thorough re-search of the premises."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That is absolutely needless," replied G--. "I am not more sure that I breathe than I am that the letter is not at the Hotel."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin. "You have, of course, an accurate description of the letter?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Oh yes!" --And here the Prefect, producing a memorandum-book, proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and especially of the external appearance of the missing document. Soon after finishing the perusal of this description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed in spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman before.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In about a month afterwards he paid us another visit, and found us occupied very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and entered into some ordinary conversation. At length I said,--</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Well, but G--, what of the purloined letter? I presume you have at last made up your mind that there is no such thing as overreaching the Minister?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Confound him, say I --yes; I made the reexamination, however, as Dupin suggested --but it was all labor lost, as I knew it would be."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How much was the reward offered, did you say?" asked Dupin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why, a very great deal --a very liberal reward --I don't like to say how much, precisely; but one thing I will say, that I wouldn't mind giving my individual check for fifty thousand francs to any one who could obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming of more and more importance every day; and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, I could do no more than I have done."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his meerschaum, "I really --think, G--, you have not exerted yourself--to the utmost in this matter. You might --do a little more, I think, eh?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How? --In what way?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why --puff, puff --you might --puff, puff --employ counsel in the matter, eh? --puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they tell of Abernethy?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No; hang Abernethy!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of spunging upon this Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an imaginary individual.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his symptoms are such and such; now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?'</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"'Take!' said Abernethy, 'why, take advice, to be sure.'"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I would really give fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me in the matter."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a check-book, "you may as well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely thunderstricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, less, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; then, apparently in some measure, he seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house, without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had requested him to fill up the check.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, when G-- detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D--, I felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation --so far as his labors extended."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"So far as his labors extended?" said I.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were not only the best of their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question, have found it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I merely laughed --but he seemed quite serious in all that he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd'; --he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even' guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed "lucky," --what, in its last analysis, is it?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It is," said Dupin;" and, upon inquiring of the boy by what means he effected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, I received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucauld, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"And the identification," I said, "of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent, depends, if I understand you aright upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is admeasured."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"For its practical value it depends upon this," replied Dupin; and the Prefect and his cohort fall so frequently, first, by default of this identification, and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much --that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when urged by some unusual emergency --by some extraordinary reward --they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D--, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the microscope, and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches --what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect, in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter, --not exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg --but, at least, in some hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg? And do you not see also, that such recherches nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions, and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects; for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed --a disposal of it in this recherche manner, --is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance --or, what amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude, --the qualities in question have never been known to fall. You will now understand what I meant in suggesting that, had the purloined letter been hidden anywhere within the limits of the Prefect's examination --in other words, had the principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles of the Prefect --its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified; and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I know; and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"'Il y a a parier,'" replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, "'que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre.' The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The French are the originators of this particular deception; but if a term is of any importance --if words derive any value from applicability --then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' 'religio' religion or 'homines honesti,' a set of honorable men."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the algebraists of Paris; but proceed."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which is cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical study. The mathematics are the science of form and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation --of form and quantity --is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. But the mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of an absolutely general applicability --as the world indeed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned 'Mythology,' mentions an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x squared + px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe occasions may occur where x squared + px is not altogether equal to q, and, having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his last observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of giving me this check. I knew him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could not fall to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate --and events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate --the waylayings to which he was subjected. He must have foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. His frequent absences from home at night, which were hailed by the Prefect as certain aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction to which G--, in fact, did finally arrive --the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles concealed --I felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on account of its being so very self-evident."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I really thought he would have fallen into convulsions."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop doors, are the most attractive of attention?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I have never given the matter a thought," I said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word --the name of town, river, state or empire --any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search --the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial hotel. I found D-- at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being now alive --but that is only when nobody sees him.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I paid special attention to a large writing-table near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle --as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D--, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the upper divisions of the rack.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D-- cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S-- family. Here, the address, to the Minister, was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D--, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to suspect.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a most animated discussion with the Minister, on a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed, and re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a mob. D-- rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as regards externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings; imitating the D-- cipher, very readily, by means of a seal formed of bread.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D-came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But what purpose had you," I asked, in replacing the letter by a fac-simile? Would it not have been better, at the first visit, to have seized it openly, and departed?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"D--," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. She has now him in hers; since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathy --at least no pity --for him who descends. He is the monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her whom the Prefect terms 'a certain personage,' he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How? did you put any thing particular in it?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Why --it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank --that would have been insulting. D--, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words--</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">--Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atree, est digne de Thyeste.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They are to be found in Crebillon's 'Atree.'"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-38384139507146462542009-03-26T06:01:00.001-07:002009-03-26T06:01:55.480-07:00Strangers When We Meet<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Hanif Kureishi<br /></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Can you hear me? No. No one can hear me. </div><div>Nobody knows I am here. </div><div>But I can hear them. </div><div>I am in a hotel room, sitting forward in a chair, leaning my ear against the wall. In the next room is a couple. They have been, talking, amicably enough. Their exchanges seem slight but natural. However, their voices are low. Attentive though I am, I cannot make out the details. </div><div>I recall that when listening through obstructions, a glass can be effective. I tip-toe to the bathroom to fetch one. Holding it against the wall with my head attached, I attempt to enhance my hearing. Which way round should the glass go? If people could see me crouched like this! But in here I am alone and everything is spoiled. </div><div>This was to be my summer holiday, in a village by the sea. My bag is open on the bed, a book of Love Poetry and a biography of Rod Stewart on top. Yesterday I went to Kensington High Street and shopped for guide-books, walking boots, novels, sex toys, drugs, and Al Green tapes for my walkman. I packed last night and got to bed early. This morning I set my alarm for six and read a little of Stanislavski's 'My Life In Art'. "I have lived a variegated life, during the course of which I have been forced more than once to change my most fundamental ideas..." </div><div>Later, I ran in Hyde Park and as usual had breakfast in a cafe, with my flat-mates, an actress and an actor with whom I was at drama school. "'Good luck! Have a great time, you lucky bastard!" they called, as I headed for the station with my bag over my shoulder. They are enthusiastic about everything, as young actors tend to be. Perhaps that is why I prefer older people, like Florence, who is 'in the next room. Even as a teenager I preferred my friends' parents - usually their mothers to my own friends. It was what people had to say about their lives that excited me, rather than football or parties. </div><div>Just now I returned from the beach, ten minutes walk away, past a row of new bungalows. The sea was lugubrious, almost grey. I trudged beside deserted bathing huts set in scrub land. There was some appropriate beauty in the overcast desolation and drizzle, and the open, empty distances. A handful of stationary men in yellow capes nursed fishing lines on the shore. On a patch of tarmac people were crowded in camper vans. All the essential elements for a holiday in England seemed to be in place. A couple who needed to talk could have the opportunity here. </div><div>Bounded by farms and fields of grazing, cattle and horses, this hotel is a large cottage with barns to the side, set in flower-filled gardens. There is a dining room, bright as a chandelier with glass and cutlery, where a tie is required - these little snobberies increase the further you are from London. But you can eat the same food in the bar, which is situated [as they said in the hotel guide, which Florence and I studied together] in the basement of the hotel. The rooms are snug, if not a little floral, and with an unnecessary abundance of equine motifs. Nevertheless, there is a double-bed, a television, and a bathroom you need not fear. </div><div>Now there is laughter next door! It is, admittedly, only him, the unconcerned laughter of someone living in a solid, established world. Yet she must have gone to the trouble to say something humorous. Why is she not amusing me? What did Florence say? How long will I be able to bear this? </div><div>Suddenly I get up, blunder over the corner of the bed and send the glass flying. Perhaps my cry and the bang will smash their idyll, but why should it? I doubt whether my lover knows that I have been allocated the next room. Although we arrived in the same taxi, we did not check-in together, since I went to explore, just as my sisters and I would have done, on holiday with our parents. It is only later, when I open the door, that I hear her voice and realise we are in adjacent rooms. </div><div>I will leave here; I have to. It will not be tonight. The thought of going home is more than disappointing. What will my flat-mates say? We are not best friends: their bemusement I can survive, and I could live in the flat as if I am away, with the curtains drawn, taking no calls, eschewing the pubs and cafes where I do the crossword and write letters seeking work. But if I ring my close friends they will say, why are you back already? What went wrong? What will I reply? There will be laughter and gossip. The story will be repeated by people who have never met me. It could trail me, for years. </div><div>Tomorrow I could go on to Devon or Somerset, as Florence and I discussed. We intended to leave it open. Our first time away - in fact our first complete night together - was to be an adventure. We wanted to enjoy one another free of the thought that she would have to return to her husband in a few hours. We would wake up, make love, and exchange dreams over breakfast. </div><div>I am not in the mood to decide anything. </div><div>They have plenty to say next door: a little unusual, surely, for a couple who have been married five years. </div><div>I wipe my eyes, wash my face and go to the door. I will have a few drinks at the bar and order supper. I have inspected the menu and the food looks promising, particularly the puddings, which Florence loves to take a spoon of, push away and say to the waiter, "that's me done!" Perhaps, from across the room, I will have the privilege of watching this. </div><div>But I return to my position against this familiar piece of wall, massage my shin and try to depict what they are doing, as if I am listening to a radio play. Probably they are getting changed. Often, when I am alone with Florence, I turn around and she is naked. She removes her clothes as easily as others slip off their shoes. At twenty nine her body is supple. I think of her lying naked on my bed reading a script for me, and saying what she thinks, as I fix something to eat. She does the parts in funny voices until 1 am afraid to take the project seriously. I have a sweater of hers, and some gloves, which she left at my place. Why don't I rap on their door? I am all for surrealism. </div><div>They will be in the dining room later. I cannot see why it would occur to him to take her elsewhere tonight. The man will eat opposite his woman, asking her opinion of the sauces, contentedly oblivious of everything else, knowing Florence's lips, jokes, breasts and kindnesses are his. I fear my own madness. Not that I will vault across the table and choke either of them. I will sit with my anger and will not appreciate my food. I will go to bed forlorn, and half-drunk, only to hear them again. The hotel is not full: I can ask for another room. In the bar I saw a woman reading The Bone People. There are several young Austrian tourists too, in long socks, studying maps and guide books. What a time we could all have. </div><div>But there is an awful compulsion. I need to know how they are, together. Somehow, my ear will always be pressed against this wall.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Earlier today I was sitting in the train at the station. I had bought wine, sandwiches and, as a surprise, chocolate cake. The sun burned through the window. [It is odd how one imagines that just because the sun is shining in London, it is shining everywhere else.] I had purchased first class seats, paying for the trip with money earned on a film, playing the lead, a street boy, a drug kid, a thief. I have been shown the rough cut. It is being edited and will have a rock sound track. The producer is confident of getting it into the Director's Fortnight, in Cannes, where, he claims, they are so moneyed and privileged, they adore anything seedy and cruel. </div><div>Florence is certainly sharper than my agent. When I first heard about the film from some other actors she told me that when she was an actress she'd had supper with the producer a few times. I imagined she was boasting, but she rang him at home, and insisted the director meet me. I sat on her knee with my fingers on her nipple as she, made the call. She didn't admit that we know one another, but said she has seen me in a play. "He's not only pretty," she said, pinching my cheek. "He has a heart-breaking sadness, and charm." </div><div>There were scores of young actors being considered for the part. I recognised most of them smoking, snuffling and complaining in the line outside the audition room. I presumed we would be rivals for life but it was to me that the producer said, "It is yours if you want it!" </div><div>Waiting for Florence O'Hara on the train made my blood so effervescent that I speculated about whether I could have her in the toilet. I had never attempted such a caper, but she refused me little. Or perhaps she could slip her hand under my newspaper. For days I had been imagining what pleasures we might make. We would have a week of one another before I went to Los Angeles for the first time, to play a small part in an independent American movie. </div><div>With two minutes before the train was to leave - and I was becoming concerned, having already been walking about the station for an hour - I glimpsed her framed in the window and almost shouted out. To confirm the fact that we were going on holiday, she was wearing a floppy purple hat. Florence can dress incongruently at times, wearing, say, antique jewelry and a silk top with worn-out, frayed shoes, as if by the time she arrives at her feet she has forgotten what she has done with her head. </div><div>Behind her was her husband. </div><div>I recognised him from a wedding photograph I saw on the one occasion I popped warily into their flat, to survey their view of Hammersmith Bridge and the river. Florence had suggested I paint the view. Today, for some reason, he was seeing her off. She would wave through the window at him - I hoped she would not kiss him - before sinking down next to me. </div><div>There is always something suspicious about the need to be alone. The trip had taken some arranging. At first, conspiring in bed, Florence and I thought she should tell her husband she was holidaying with a girlfriend. But intricate lies made Florence's hands perspire. Instead, she ascertained when her husband would be particularly busy at the office, and insisted that she needed to read, walk and think. "Think about what?" he asked, inevitably, as he dressed for work. But, quietly, she could be inflexible, and he liked to be magnanimous. </div><div>"All right my dear," he announced. "Go and be alone and see how much you miss me." </div><div>During the week before our departure, Florence and I saw one another twice. She phoned and I caught a taxi outside my front door in Gloucester Road. She put on a head scarf and dark glasses, and slipped out to meet me in one of the many pubs near her flat, along the river, There was an abstraction about her that made me want her more, and which I assumed would be repaired by our holiday together. </div><div>Her husband was walking through the train towards me. Despite having left the office for only an hour, he was wearing a cream linen jacket, jeans and old deck shoes, without socks. Fine, I thought, he's so polite he's helping her right into her seat, that's something a twenty seven year old like me could learn from. </div><div>He heaved her bag onto the rack and they sat opposite, across the aisle. He glanced indifferently in my direction. She was captivated by the activity on the platform. When he talked she smiled. Then I noticed she was tugging at the skin around her thumbnail until it bled, and she had to find a tissue in her bag. Florence was wearing her wedding ring, something she had never done with me, apart from the first time I met her. </div><div>With an unmistakable jolt, the train left the station, on its way to our holiday destination with me, my lover and her husband aboard. </div><div>I stood up, sat down, tapped myself on the head, searched in my bag, and looked around wildly, as if seeking someone to explain the situation to me. Eventually, having watched me eat the chocolate cake - on another occasion she would have licked the crumbs from my lips - Florence left her seat to fetch sandwiches. I went to the toilet where she was waiting for me. </div><div>"He insisted on coming." she whispered, digging her nails into my arm. </div><div>"It was yesterday. He gave me no choice. I couldn't resist without making him jealous and suspicious. I had no chance to speak to you." </div><div>"He's staying the whole week'?" </div><div>She looked agitated. "He'll get bored. This kind of thing doesn't interest him." </div><div>"What sort of thing.?" </div><div>"Being on holiday. We usually go somewhere... like Italy. Or the Hamptons-" </div><div>"Where?" </div><div>"Outside New York." </div><div>She said, "I'll encourage him to go home. Will you wait'?" </div><div>"I can't say," I told her. "You've really made a mess of everything! How could you do such a thing!" </div><div>"Rob-" </div><div>She tried to kiss me but I pulled away. She passed her hand between my legs - and I wish she hadn't - before returning to her husband. I walked up and down the train before sitting down. It didn't occur to me to find a place somewhere else. I noticed that blood from her thumb was smeared over my arm and hand. </div><div>I had never seen her look this miserable. She is sometimes so nervous she will spill the contents of her bag over the street and have to get on her knees to retrieve her things. Yet she can be brave. On the tube once, three young men started to bait and rob the passengers. While the rest of us were lost in terror, she attacked the robbers with an insane fury that won her a bravery award. </div><div>For the rest of the journey she pretended to be asleep. Her husband read a thriller. </div><div>At the country station, as I marched off the platform, I saw the hotel had sent a car to pick us up: one car. Before I could inquire about trains back to London, the driver approached me. </div><div>"Robert Miles?" </div><div>"Yes?" </div><div>"This way please." </div><div>The bent countryman led me outside where the air was cool and fresh. The immensity of the sky could have calmed a person. It was for this that Florence and I decided, one afternoon, to get away. </div><div>The countryman opened the car door. </div><div>"Sit down, sir." I hesitated. He swept dog hairs from the seat and said, "I'll drive as slowly as I can, and tell you a little about the area." </div><div>He deposited my bag in the boot. I had no choice but to get in the car. He shut the door. Florence and her husband were invited to sit in the back. As we drove away the car bulged with our heat and presence. The driver talked to me, and listened to them. </div><div>"I'm glad I decided to come," Florence's husband was saying. "Still, we could have gone up to the House." </div><div>"Oh. that place." she sighed. </div><div>"Yes, it's like having a third parent, You don't have to keep telling me you don't like it. What made you decide on here?" </div><div>I wanted to turn round and say, "I decided-" </div><div>"I saw it in a brochure," she said . </div><div>"You told me you'd been here as a child." </div><div>"Yes, the brochure reminded me. I went to lots of places as a child, with my mother." </div><div>In the mirror I saw him put his arm around her and lay his hand on her breast. "Your mad mother," he said. </div><div>"Yes," she said. </div><div>"Just us now," he said. "I'm so glad I came."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I am hungry. At last I unstick my ear from the wall, shake my head as if to clear it, go downstairs, and have supper in the bar crowded with the local lushes, who prefer this hotel to the pubs. I eat with my back to the room, a book in front of me, wondering where Florence and her husband are sitting and what they are saying, like someone in Plato's cave, trying to read the shadows. Half-way through the meal, having resolved to face them at last, I rise suddenly, change my seat and turn around. They are not there. </div><div>As I order another drink the plump girl behind the bar smiles at me. "We thought you were waiting for some lucky person who didn't turn up." </div><div>"There's no lucky person but it's not so bad." </div><div>I take my drink and walk about, though I do not know where I am going. Waitresses tear in and out of the hot dining room, so smart, inhibited and nervous, lacking the London arrogance, aggression and beauty. Middle-aged women with painted faces and bright dresses, and satisfied men in suits and ties, who do not question their right to be here - this being their world - are beginning to leave, holding glasses. For a moment they stand on this piece of earth, as it moves on imperceptibly, and they gurgle and chuckle with happiness. </div><div>Optimistically I follow a couple into one of the sitting rooms where they will have more drinks and coffee. I collapse into a high-backed sofa. </div><div>After a time I recognise the voice I am listening to. Florence and her husband have come in and are sitting behind me. They start to play Scrabble. I am close enough to smell her. </div><div>"I liked the fish," she is saying. "The vegetables were just right. Not overcooked and not raw." </div><div>I have been thinking of how proud I was that I had hooked a married woman. </div><div>"Florence." he says. "It's your turn. Are you sure you're concentrating?" </div><div>When I first started with Florence I wanted to be discreet as well as wanting to show-off. I hoped to run into people I know; I was convinced my friends were spreading gossip about me. I had never had an adventure like it. If it failed, I would walk away unscathed. </div><div>"We don't eat enough fish," she says. </div><div>Certainly I didn't think much about what her husband might be like, or why she married him. To me she made him irrelevant. It was only us. More importantly, I have hardly thought about the distinction between my fantasy of her, and who she really might be. </div><div>He says, "You don't like to kiss me when I've eaten meat." </div><div>"No, I don't," she says. </div><div>"Kiss me now," he says. </div><div>"Let's save it." </div><div>"Let's not." </div><div>"Archie-" </div><div>Her voice sounds forced and dull, as if she is about to weep. How long do I intend to sit here? My mind whirls: I have forgotten who I am. I imagine catastrophes and punishments everywhere. I suppose it was to cure myself of such painful furies that I become depressed so often. When I am depressed I shut everything down, living in a tiny part of myself, in my sexuality or ambition to be an actor. Otherwise, I kill myself off. I have talked to Florence about these things - about 'melancholy', as she puts it - and she understands it: the first person I have known who does.</div><div>I realise that if I peep around the arm of the sofa I can see Florence from the side, perched on a stool. I move a little, now she is in full view, wearing a tight white top, cream bags and white sandals. </div><div>Oddly, I am behaving as if this man has stolen my woman. In fact it is I who have purloined his, and if he finds out, he could easily become annoyed and perhaps violent. But I gaze and gaze at her, at the way she puts her right hand across her face and rests the back of her hand on her cheek with her fingers beneath her eye, a gesture she must have made as a child, and will probably make as an old woman. </div><div>If he is a ruling presence in our lives, he is an invisible one; and if she behaves a little, lets say, obscurely, at times, it is because she lives behind a wall I can only listen at. She is free during the day but likes to account for where she is. He would have been more than satisfied with, "I spent the afternoon at the Tate" and could endure with less about its Giacomettis. When we separate at the end of each meeting she often becomes agitated and upset. </div><div>I assumed that I did not care enough about her to worry about her husband. It never occurred to me that she and I would live together, for instance: we would continue casually until we fell out. Nevertheless, watching her now, I am not ready for that. I want her to want me, and me alone. I must play the lead and not be a mere walk-on. </div><div>The barmaid comes and picks up my glass. "Can I get you something else?" </div><div>"No thanks," I say in a low voice. </div><div>I notice that Florence raises her head a little. </div><div>"Did you enjoy your meal?" says the barmaid. </div><div>"Yes. Particularly the fish. The vegetables were just right. Not overcooked and not raw." Then I say, "When does the bar close?" </div><div>"Thursday!" she says, and laughs. </div><div>Without looking at Florence or her husband, I follow her out of the room and lean tiredly across the bar. </div><div>"What are you doing down here?" she says this as if she's certain that it is not my kind of place. </div><div>"Only relaxing," I say. </div><div>She lowers her voice. "We all hate it down here. Relaxing's all there is to do. You'll get plenty of it." </div><div>"What do you like to do'?" </div><div>"We used to play Russian roulette with cars. Driving across cross-roads, hoping that nothing is coming the other way. That sort of thing." </div><div>"What's your name?" </div><div>"Martha." </div><div>She puts my drink down. I tell her my room number. </div><div>"That's all right," she says. Martha leans towards me. </div><div>"Listen-" she says. </div><div>At that moment Florence's husband sits heavily on the stool beside me and shifts about on it, as he is trying to screw it into the floor. I scuttle along a little. </div><div>He turns to me. "All right if I sit down?" </div><div>"Why not?" I say. </div><div>He orders a cigar. "And a brandy," he says to Martha. He looks at me before I can turn my back. "Anything for you?" </div><div>I start to get up. "I'm just off." </div><div>"Something I said?" </div><div>"No." </div><div>He says, "I saw you in the train." </div><div>"Really? Oh yes. Was that your wife?" </div><div>"Of course." </div><div>"Is she going to join us?" </div><div>"How do I know? Do you want me to ring the room'?" </div><div>"I don't want you to do anything." </div><div>"Have a brandy." He lays his hand on my shoulder. "I say, barmaid - a brandy for this young man!" </div><div>"Right,"' I say. "Right." </div><div>"Do you like brandy?" she says to me, kindly. </div><div>"Very much," I say. </div><div>He drags his tie off and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. </div><div>"Sit down," he says. "We're on bloody holiday. Let's make the most of it! Can I ask your name?"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I met Florence nearly a year ago in a screening room, where we were the only people viewing a film made by a mutual friend. She lay almost on her back in the wide seat, groaning, laughing and snorting throughout the film. At the end - before the end, in fact - she started talking about the performances. I invited her out for a drink. After leaving university, she was an actress for a couple of years. "It was a cattle-market, darling," she said. "Couldn't stand being compared to other people." </div><div>Yet a few days after we met, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor in my place, as my flat-mates wrote down the names of casting directors she suggested they contact. She fitted easily into my world of agents, auditions, scripts, and the confusion of young people whose life hangs on chance, looks, and the ability to bear large amounts of uncertainty. It was not only that she liked the semi-student life, the dope-smoking, the confused promiscuity and exhibitionism, but that she seemed to envy and miss it. </div><div>"If only I could stay," she'd say theatrically, at the door. "Stay then," I replied from the top of the stairs. </div><div>"Not yet," she said. </div><div>"When?" </div><div>"You enjoy yourself! Live all you can!" </div><div>Our 'affair' began without being announced to anyone - not even to us. She rang me - I rarely phoned her; she asked to see me - "at ten past five, in the Scarsdale!" and I would be there with ten minutes to spare. Certainly, I had nothing else to do but attend actors' workshops, and read. Sometimes we went to bed. Sexually she will say and do anything, with the enthusiasm of someone dancing or running. I am not always certain she is entirely there; sometimes I have to remind her she is not giving a solo performance. </div><div>Often we go to the theatre in the afternoon, and then to a pub to discuss the writing, acting, and direction. She takes me to see peculiar theatre, groups that use grotesquerie, masks and gibberish. She has introduced me to dance and performance art. When she kisses me goodbye and goes home, or out to meet her husband, I see actresses, girls who work in TV, students, au pairs. They keep me from feeling too much for Florence. There was one night of alcohol and grief, when I wept and hated her inaccessibility. However, I have not had a suitable girlfriend for more than two years. The last woman I lived with became only my friend; the relationship lacked velocity and a future. My life did tend toward stasis, which Florence has recognised. </div><div>I had been finding it difficult to break with my background, in South London. The men I grew up with were tough and loud-mouthed, bragging of their ignorance and crudity. They believed aggression was their most necessary tool. On leaving school they became villains and thieves. In their twenties, when they had children, they turned to car dealing, building or Security. They continued to go to football matches, drink heavily, and pursue teenage longings, ideals to which they seem to have become addicted. What I want to do - act - represents an inexplicable ambition that intimidates them, and, by its nature, will leave them behind. I am not saying there are not any working class actors. I hope to play many parts. I want to transform myself until I become unrecognisable. But I will not become an actor for whom being working class is 'an act'. No cops or criminals in TV series for me. </div><div>In the pub with these friends I try to retain the accent and attitudes of my past, but I have emerged from the anonymous world and they are contemptuous and provocative. "Give us a speech, Larry. To buy a drink or not to by a drink!" I am about to get into a fight over divergent ideas of who I should be. I begin to consider them cowardly, living only little lives, full of bold talk, but doing nothing and going nowhere. It is not until later that Florence teaches me that part of being successful is the ability to bear resentment and envy. </div><div>Not that I am particularly educated. If she notices it, Florence never comments on my ignorance. She can be lightheaded and frivolous herself; once she shopped for two days. Nevertheless, she sits me down in front of the most exacting films. Bergman's 'Cries and Whispers', for instance, she thinks it necessary we both absorb through repetition; it is as if she is singing along with the film, or, in the case of that work, moaning. She does not categorize these things as art, as I do, but uses them as objects of immediate application. </div><div>Almost as soon as I met Florence, she altered the direction of my life. The Royal Shakespeare Company had offered me a two year contract. I would share a cottage in Stratford. She would sit with me beside the Avon. I had celebrated in Joe Allens with friends, and my agent was working on the contract. </div><div>To celebrate I took Florence out to lunch. I read in a magazine that the restaurant was one of the smartest in London, but she swung about in her chair. As thin and flat-chested as a dancer, I should have remembered that she dislikes eating. Certainly she does not like sitting down for her food surrounded by people she has seen on television and considers pompous. Looking at her in such starched surroundings I can see how eccentric or individual she is. </div><div>"I have to tell you that you must turn the Stratford opportunity down," she said. </div><div>"It's every young actor's dream, Florence," I said patronizingly. </div><div>"Don't be such a common little fool. They're too small, too small," she says. "Not only that suit you're wearing, but the parts. Going to the Royal Shakespeare Company will be a waste of time." She flicks my nose with her fingernail. </div><div>"Ow." </div><div>"You must listen to me." </div><div>I did. </div><div>My agent was amazed and furious. Without entirely knowing why, I took Florence's advice. Soon I was playing big roles in little places: Biff in Death Of A Salesman, in Bristol; the lead in a new play in Cheltenham; Romeo in Yorkshire. </div><div>With a girlfriend she came on the train to see previews and we traveled back together late at night, drinking wine in plastic cups. She anatomised my performance severely but I took notes. Criticism, I suppose, reminded me of my dependency on her. Yet, when she was finished, and I was almost finished off, she continued to look at me without any diminishment of affection. </div><div>It was fine by her if I took small parts on television or in films. I had to get used to the camera so that I could concentrate on movies, "like Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis" as she put it. She said she understands what women would like about me on screen, when I can only laugh at such an idea. Also she says that most actors see only moments; I have to learn how to develop a part through the whole film. She told me to learn as much as I could, for when it took off for me, it would happen very quickly. She even suggested that I should direct movies, saying, "If you generate your own work it will give you another kind of pleasure." </div><div>Like my friends at drama school, my head was full of schemes and fantasies. I have always been impressed by people who live with deliberation. Yet ambition, or desire in the world, makes me apprehensive. I am afraid of what I want, of where it might take me, and what it might make others think of me. Yet, as Florence explains, how are cathedrals and banks built, diseases eliminated, dictators crushed, football matches won without frustration and the longing to overcome it, called ambition? Often the simplest things have to be explained. Florence fills me with hope, but ensures it is based on the Possible. </div><div>I have little idea of what Florence dreams of, and of what kind of world she inhabits with Archie, who is in 'property'. I doubt she is ensnared in some kind of Dolls House. In the middle of the city in which I live, is an undisturbed English continuity: they are London 'bohemians'. It is an expensive indolence and carelessness, but the money for country houses, and for villas in France and the West Indies, as well as for parties, the opera, excursions and weekends away, never seems to run out. This set has known one another for generations; their parents were friends and lovers in those alcoholic times, the 50s and 60s. Perhaps Florence is lost in something she does not entirely like or understand but when she calls her husband's world 'grown-up' I resent the idea that she considers my world childish. My guess is that she is uncomfortable in such an intransigent and bloodless world but is unable to live according to her own rules. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>"Rob," I stay. </div><div>Florence's husband offers me his be-ringed hand. I can hardly bear to touch him, and he must find me damp with apprehension. </div><div>"Archie O'Hara. Stayed here before?" </div><div>"No... I just came down...to get away." </div><div>"From what?" </div><div>"You know." </div><div>"Yes," he says, indifferently. "Don't I know. That's what we're doing. Getting away." </div><div>We sit there and Martha looks at us as if we all know one another. Archie wears a blue jacket, white shirt and yellow corduroys: his face is smooth and well-fed. As Florence has chosen to be with him - most of the time - he must, I imagine, have some unusual qualities. Is he completely dissimilar to me, or does he resemble me in ways I cannot see? If I set aside my own wretchedness, perhaps I will learn. </div><div>"How long are you staying?" I ask. </div><div>He puff's on his cigar and says nothing. </div><div>Martha says, "I could tell you where to go and what to look at, if you want - " </div><div>Archie says, "Thanks, but I've been thinking of getting another country place. I inherited a stately home as they call them these days, with a lot of Japanese photographing me through the windows. Sometimes 1 feel like sitting there in a dress and tiara. My wife says you can't sit down without falling into the dust of a dozen centuries. So we might have to drive round ... estate agents and all that." </div><div>I say, "Does your wife like the country?" </div><div>"London women have fantasies about fields. But she suffers from hay fever. I can't see the point in going to a place where you know no one. But then I can't see the point. in anything." </div><div>He puts his head back and laughs. </div><div>"Are you depressed?" </div><div>"You know that, do you?" He sighs. "It's staring everyone in the face, like a slashed throat." He says after a time, "I'm not going to kill myself. But I could, just as well." </div><div>"I had it for two years, once." </div><div>He squeezes my arm as Florence sometimes does, "Now it's gone?" </div><div>I tap the wooden bar. "Yes." </div><div>"That's good to hear. You're a happy little man, are you now? " </div><div>I am about to inform him that it is returning, probably as a result of meeting him. But perhaps that is despair not depression. These distinctions are momentous to melancholics. </div><div>We discuss the emptying out-, the fear of living: the creation of a wasteland; the denigration of value and meaning. I tell him melancholy was part of my interior scene and that I considered it to be the way the world was, until I stood against it. </div><div>I announce, "People make themselves sick when they aren't leading the lives they should be leading." </div><div>He bangs the bar. "How mundane, but true." </div><div>By now the place has almost emptied. Martha collects the glasses, sweeps the floor and wipes down the bar. She continues to put out brandies for us. </div><div>She watches us and says, "There isn't much intelligent conversation down here." </div><div>"What do you think of meditation?" he says. "Eastern hogwash or truth?"' </div><div>"It helps my concentration," I say. "I'm an actor." </div><div>"There's a lot of actors about. They rather get under one's feet, talking about 'centering' and all that." </div><div>I say. "Do you know any actors? Or actresses?" </div><div>"Do you count ten breaths or only four?" he says, "when meditating" </div><div>"Four," I say. 'There's less time to get lost." </div><div>"Who taught you?" </div><div>Your wife, I am about to say. </div><div>"I had a good meditation teacher," I say. </div><div>"Where was the class ... could you tell me?" </div><div>"The woman who taught me... I met her by chance, one day, in a cinema. She seemed to like me instantly. I liked her liking me. She led me on, you could say." </div><div>"Really?" says Martha, leaning across the bar. </div><div>"-Only to take my hand and tell me, with some sadness, that she was married. I thought that would suit me. Anyhow, she taught me some things. " </div><div>"She didn't tell you she was married?" Martha said. </div><div>"She did, yes. Just before we slept together." </div><div>"Moments before?" said Martha. "She sounds like an awful person. </div><div>"Why?" </div><div>"To do that to you! Do you want her to leave her husband?" </div><div>"What for? I don't know. I haven't thought about it." Archie laughs. "Wait 'til he catches up with youth </div><div>"I hope I'm not keeping you," I say to Archie. </div><div>""My wife will be on her REMs by now. I've missed my conjugals for today." </div><div>"Does she usually go to sleep at this time?" </div><div>"I can't keep that woman out of bed." </div><div>"And she reads in bed? Novels?" </div><div>"What are you, a fucking librarian?" </div><div>I say, "I like basic information about people. The facts, not opinions." </div><div>"Yes. That's a basic interest in people. And you still have that?" </div><div>"Don't you?" </div><div>He thinks about it. "Perhaps you study people because you're an actor." </div><div>Martha lights a cigarette. She has become thoughtful. "It's s not only that. I know it isn't. It is an excuse for looking. But looking is the thing." She turns to me with a smile. </div><div>"That might be right, my dear," Archie says. "Things are rarely only one thing." </div><div>For my benefit she shoots him a fierce look and I smile at her. </div><div>"Better make a move," he says. "Better had." </div><div>I want to ask him more. "What does your wife do? Did you ever see her act?" </div><div>"Told you she was an actress, did I? Don't remember that. Don't usually say that, as it's not true. Like women, eh?" </div><div>"Sorry?" </div><div>"Saw how you appreciated my wife, on the train." He gets down from the stool, and staggers. "It's beautiful when I'm sitting down. Better help us upstairs." </div><div>He finds my shoulder and connects himself to it. He is heavy and I feel like letting him go. I do not like being so close to him. </div><div>"I'll give you a hand," Martha says. "It's not far. You're in the next room to one another." </div><div>One on each side, we heave him upstairs. The last few steps he takes with gingerly independence. </div><div>At the door he turns. "Guide me into the room. Don't know the layout. Could be pitch dark with only my wife's teeth for light." </div><div>Martha takes his key and opens the door, for him. "Goodnight," I say. </div><div>I am not accompanying him into the bedroom. </div><div>"Hey." he falls into the room. </div><div>I wave at Martha. </div><div>"Archie," says startled Florence from the darkness within. "Is that you?" </div><div>"Who else, dammit? Undress me" </div><div>"Archie-" </div><div>"Wife's duty!" </div><div>I sink down beside the wall like a gargoyle and think of her tearing at the warm mound of him. Now I have seen him, his voice seems clearer. </div><div>I hear him say, "I was just talking to someone." </div><div>"Who?" </div><div>"That boy in the next room." </div><div>"Which boy?" </div><div>"The actor, you fool. He was in the train. Now he's in the hotel!" </div><div>"Is he? Why?" </div><div>"How do I know?" </div><div>He switches the TV on. I would not have done such a thing when she was sleeping. I think of Florence sleeping. I know what her face will be like. She will be asleep and not with me.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Next morning it is silent next door. I walk along the corridor hoping I will not run into Florence and Archie. Maids are starting to clean the rooms. I pass people on the stairs and say 'good morning'. The hotel smells of furniture polish and fried food. At the door to the breakfast room I bump into them. We smile at one another, I slide by and secure a table behind a pillar. I open the newspaper and order haddock, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried potatoes. </div><div>Last night I dreamed I had a nervous breakdown: that I was walking around a foreign town incapable of considered thought or action, not knowing who I was or where I was going. I wonder whether this is a wish, that I want to incapacitate myself rather than seriously consider what I should do. I need to remind myself that such hopelessness will lead to depression. Better to do something. After breakfast 1 will get the train back to London. </div><div>I am thinking that it is likely that I will never see Florence again when she rushes around the corner. </div><div>"What are you doing? What are you intending to do'? Oh Rob, tell me." </div><div>She is close to me, breathing over me; her hair touches my face, her hand is on mine, and I want her again, but I hate her, and hate myself. </div><div>"What are you intending to do?" I ask. </div><div>"I will persuade him to leave." </div><div>"When?" </div><div>"Now. He'll be on the lunch time train." </div><div>"No doubt sitting next to me." </div><div>"But we can talk and be together! I'll do anything you want." I look at her doubtfully. She says, "Don't go this morning. Don't do that to me." </div><div>For some reason a man I have never seen before, with a lapel badge saying manager, is standing beside the table. </div><div>"Excuse me," he says. </div><div>Florence does not notice him. "I beg you," she says. "Give me a chance." She kisses me. "You promise?" </div><div>"Excuse me," the hotel manager says. "The car you ordered is here, Sir." I stare at him. He seems to regard us as a couple. "The rental car - suitable for a man and a woman, touring." </div><div>"Oh yes," I say. </div><div>"Would you both like to look at it now?" </div><div>With a wave, Florence goes. Outside, I gaze at the big, four door family saloon, chosen in a moment of romantic distraction. I sit in it. </div><div>After breakfast I drive into Lyme Regis, buy fish and chips and walk on the Cobb; later I drive to Charmouth, climb up the side of the cliff and look out to sea. It is beginning to feel like being on holiday with your parents when you are too old for it. </div><div>I return to the hotel to say goodbye to Florence again in the conservatory, reading the papers, is Archie, wearing a suit jacket over a T-shirt, brown shorts and black socks and shoes, looking like someone who has dressed for the office but forgotten to put their trousers on. </div><div>As I back away, hoping he has not recognized me and if he does, that he will not quite recall who I am, he says, "Have a good morning?" </div><div>In front of him is a half empty bottle of wine. His face is covered in a fine glaze of sweat. </div><div>I tell him where I've been. </div><div>"Busy boy," he says. </div><div>"And you? You're still around... here?" </div><div>"We've walked and even read books. I'm terribly, terribly glad I came. </div><div>He pours a glass of wine and hands it to me. </div><div>I say, "Think you might stay a bit longer?" </div><div>"Don't know." </div><div>His wife comes to the other door. She blinks several times, her mouth opens, and then she seems to yawn. </div><div>"What's wrong with you?" asks her husband. </div><div>"Tired," she whispers. "Think I'll lie down." </div><div>He winks at me. "Is that an invitation?" </div><div>"Sorry, sorry," she says. </div><div>"Why the hell are you apologising? Get a grip, Florrie. I spoke to this young man last night." He jabs his finger at me. "You said this thing..." He looks into the distance and massages his temples. "'You said...if you experienced the desires, the impulses, within you, you would break up what you had created, and live anew. But there would be serious consequences. The word was in my head all night. Consequences. I haven't been able to live out those things. I have tried to put them away, but can't. I've got this image...of stuffing a lot of things in a suitcase that can't be closed, that is too small. That is my life. If I lived what I thought...it would all blow down..." </div><div>I realise Florence and I have been looking at one another. Sometimes you look at someone instead of touching them. </div><div>He regards me curiously. "What's going on? Have you met my wife?" </div><div>"Not really." </div><div>My lover and I shake hands. </div><div>Archie says, "Florrie, he's been unhappy in love. Married woman and all that. We must cheer him up." </div><div>"Is he unhappy?" she says. "Are you sure? People should cheer themselves up. Don't you think, Rob?" </div><div>She crooks her finger at me and goes. Her husband ponders his untrue life. As soon as his head re-enters his hands, I am away, racing up the stairs. </div><div>My love is lingering in the corridor. </div><div>"Come." </div><div>She pulls my arm; with shaking hands I unlock my door; she hurries me through my room and into the bathroom. She turns on the shower and the taps, flushes the toilet, and falls into my arms, kissing my face and neck and hair. </div><div>I am about to ask her to leave with me. We could collect our things, jump in the car and be on the road before Archie has lifted his head and wiped his eyes. The idea burns in me-, if I speak, our lives could change. </div><div>"Archie knows." </div><div>I pull back so I can see her. "About our exact relation to one another?" </div><div>She nods. "He's watching us. Just observing us." </div><div>"He wants to be sure, before he makes his move. </div><div>"What move?" </div><div>"Before he gets us." </div><div>"Gets us? How?" </div><div>"I don't know. But it's torture, Rob." </div><div>This thing has indeed made her mad,- such paranoia I find abhorrent. Reality, whatever it is, is -the right anchor. Nevertheless, I have been considering the same idea myself. I do not believe it, and yet I do. </div><div>"I don't care if he knows," I say. "I'm sick of it." </div><div>"But we mustn't give up!" </div><div>"What? Why not?" </div><div>"There is something between us ... which is worthwhile." </div><div>"I don't know anymore, Florrie. Florence." </div><div>She looks at me and says, "I love you, Rob." </div><div>She has never said this before. We kiss for a long time. </div><div>I turn off the taps and go through into the bedroom. She follows me and somehow we fall onto the bed. I pull up her skirt; soon she is on me. Our howls would be known to the county. When I wake up she is gone.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I walk on the beach; there is a strong wind. I put my head back: it is raining into my eyes. I think of Los Angeles, my work, and of what will happen in the next few months. A part of my life seems to be over, and I am waiting for the new. </div><div>After supper I am standing in the garden outside the dining room, smoking weed, and breathing in the damp air. I have decided it is too late to return to London tonight. Since waking up I have not spoken to Florence, only glanced into the dining room where she and her husband are seated at a table in the middle. Tonight she is wearing a long purple dress. She has started to look insistent and powerful again, a little diva. with the staff, like ants, moving around only her because they cannot resist. One more night and she will bring the room down with a wave and stride out towards the sea. I know she is going to join me later. It is only a wish, of course, but won't she be wishing too? It is probably our last chance. What will happen then? I have prepared my things and turned the car around. </div><div>There is a movement behind me. </div><div>"That's nice," she says, breathing in. </div><div>I put out my arms and Martha holds me a moment. I offer her the joint. She inhales and hands it back. </div><div>"What are you thinking?" </div><div>"Next week I'm going to Los Angeles to be in a film.' </div><div>"Is that true?" </div><div>"What about you?" </div><div>She lives nearby with her parents. Her father is a psychology lecturer in the local college, an alcoholic with a violent temper who has not been to work for a year. One day he took against London, as if it had personally offended him, and insisted the family move from Kentish Town to the country, cutting them off from everything they knew. </div><div>"We always speculate about the people who stay here, me and the kitchen girl." She says suddenly, "Is something wrong?" </div><div>She turns and looks behind. As Martha has been talking, I have seen Florence come out into the garden, watch us for a bit, and throw up her hands like someone told to mime 'despair'. A flash of purple and she is gone. </div><div>"What is it?" </div><div>"Tell me what you've been imagining about me," I say. </div><div>"But we don't know what you're doing here. Are you going to tell me?" </div><div>"Can't you guess?" I say impatiently. "Why do you keep asking me these things?" </div><div>She takes offence, but I have some idea of how to get others to talk about themselves. I discover that recently she has had an abortion, her second; that she rides a motorbike; that the young people carry knives, take drugs and copulate as often as they can; and that she wants to get away. </div><div>"Is the bar shut?" I ask. </div><div>"Yes. I can get you beer if you want." </div><div>"Would you like to drink a glass of beer with me'?" I ask. "More than one glass, I hope." </div><div>I kiss her and tell her to come to my room. "But what will your parents say if you are late home?" </div><div>"They don't care. Often I find an empty room and sleep in it. Don't want to go home." She says, "Are you sure it's only beer you want?" </div><div>"Whatever you want," I say. "You've got a key." </div><div>On the way upstairs I look into the front parlour. In the middle of the floor Florence and Archie are dancing-, or rather, he is holding onto her as they heave about. The Scrabble Board and all the letters have been knocked on the floor. His head is flopped over her shoulder: in five years he will be bald. Florence notices me and raises a hand, trying not to disturb him. </div><div>He calls out, "Hey!" </div><div>"Drunk again," I say to her. </div><div>"I know what you have been doing. Up to!" he says with leering emphasis, </div><div>"When?" </div><div>"This afternoon. Siesta. You know." </div><div>I look at Florence. </div><div>"The walls are thin," he says. "But not quite thin enough. I went upstairs. I had to fetch a glass from the bathroom. But what an entertainment. Jiggy-jig, jiggy-jig!" </div><div>"I'm glad to be an entertainment, you old fucker," I say. "I wish you could be the same for me." </div><div>"What was Rob doing this afternoon?" Florence says. "Don't leave me out of the game." </div><div>"Ha, ha, ha! You're a dopey little thing who never notices anything!" </div><div>"Don't talk to her like that-.," I say. "Talk to me like that, if you want, and see what you get! </div><div>"Rob," says Florence, soothingly. </div><div>Archie slaps Florence on the behind. "Dance, you old corpse!" </div><div>I stare at his back. He is too drunk to care that he's being provoked into a fight. </div><div>I feel like an intruder and am reminded of the sense I had as a child, when visiting friends' houses, that the furniture, banter and manner of doing things were different to the way we did them at home. The world of Archie and Florence is not mine. </div><div>I am waiting for Martha on the bed when I hear Florence and Archie in the corridor opening the door to their room. The door closes-, I listen intently, wondering if Archie has passed out and Florence is lying there awake. </div><div>The door opens and Martha rattles a bag of beer bottles. We open the windows, lie down on the bed and drink and smoke. </div><div>She leans over me. "Do you want one of these?" </div><div>I kiss her fist and open it. "I know what it is," I say. "But I've never had one." </div><div>"I hadn't 'til I came down here," she says. "These are good Es." </div><div>"Fetch some water from the bathroom." </div><div>Meanwhile I remove the chair from its position beside the wall and begin shoving the heavy bed. </div><div>"Let's have this...over there...against the wall," I say when she returns. </div><div>Martha starts to help me, an enthusiastic girl, with thick arms. </div><div>"Why do you want this?" she asks. </div><div>"I think it will be better for our purposes." </div><div>"Right," she says. "Right." </div><div>A few minutes after we lie down again, undressed this time, there is a knock on the door. We hold one another like scared children, listen and say nothing. There is another knock. Martha doesn't want to lose her job tonight. Then there is no more knocking. We do not even hear footsteps. </div><div>When we are breathing again, under the sheets I whisper, "What do you think of the couple next door? Have you talked about them? Are they suited do you think?" </div><div>"I like him," she says. </div><div>"What? Really?" </div><div>"Makes me laugh. She's beautiful...but dangerous. Would you like to to fuck her?" </div><div>I laugh. "I haven't thought about it." </div><div>"Listen," she says, putting her finger to her lips. </div><div>Neither of us moves. </div><div>"They're doing it. Next door." </div><div>"Yes," I say. "They are." </div><div>"They're quiet," she says. "I can only hear him." </div><div>"He's doing it alone." </div><div>"No. There ... there she is. A little gasp. Can you hear her now?" Touch me." </div><div>"There ... there." </div><div>"Martha-" </div><div>"Please..." </div><div>I go into the bathroom and wash my face. The drug is starting to work. It seems like speed, which I have taken with my friends in the suburbs. This drug, though, opens another window, it makes me feel more lonely. I return to the room and switch the radio on. It must have been loud. We must have been loud. Martha is ungrudging in her love-making. Later, there is a storm. A supernatural breeze, fresh, strangely still and cool, fans us. </div><div>Martha goes downstairs early to make breakfast. At dawn I run along the stony beach until I am exhausted-, then I stop, walk a little, and run again, all the while aware of the breaking brightness of the world. I shower, pack and go down for breakfast. </div><div>Florence and Archie are at the next table. Archie studies a map:</div><div>Florence keeps her head down. She does not appear to have</div><div>combed her hair. When Archie gets up to fetch something and she looks up, her face is like a mask, as if she has vacated her body. </div><div>After breakfast, collecting my things, I notice the door to their room has been wedged open by a chair. The maid is working in a room further along the hall. I look in at the unmade bed, go into my room, find Florence's sweater and gloves in my bag, and take them into their room. I stand there. Her shoes are on the floor, her perfume, necklace, and pens on the bedside table. I pull the sweater over my head. It is tight and the sleeves are too short. I put the gloves on, and wiggle my fingers. I lay them on the bed, I take a pair of scissors from her washbag in the bathroom and cut the middle finger from one of the gloves. I replace the severed digit in its original position. </div><div>As I bump along the farm track which leads up to the main road, I get out of the car, look down at the hotel on the edge of the sea and consider going back. I hate separations and finality. I am too good at putting up with things, that is my problem. </div><div>London seems to be made only of hard materials and the dust that cannot settle on it; everything is angular, particularly the people. I go to my parents' house and lie in bed; after a few days of this I leave for Los Angeles. There I am just another young actor, but one at least with a job. When I return to London we all leave the flat and I get my own place for the first time.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I have come to like going out for coffee early, with my son in his pushchair, while my Wife -sleeps. Often I meet other men whose wives need sleep, and at eight o'clock on Sunday morning we have chocolate milkshakes in McDonalds, the only place open in the dismal High Street. We talk about our children, and complain about our women. After, I go to the park, usually alone, in order to be with the boy away from my wife. She and I have different ideas about bringing him up. Peaceful moments at home are rare. </div><div>It is in the park that I see Florence for the first time since our 'holiday'. She seems to flash past me, as she flashed past the window in the train, nine years ago. For a moment I consider letting her fall back into my memory, but I am too curious for that. "Florence! Florence!" I call, again, until she turns. </div><div>She tells me she has been thinking of me and expecting us to meet, after seeing one of my films on television. </div><div>"I have followed your career, Rob." </div><div>She calls her son and he stands with her; she takes his hand. We look one another over. She and Archie have bought a house on the other side of the park. </div><div>"I even came to the plays. I know it's impossible, but I wondered if you ever glimpsed me, from the stage." </div><div>"No, But I did wonder if you took an interest." </div><div>"How could I not?"' </div><div>I laugh and ask, "How am I?" </div><div>"Better, now you do less. You probably know - you don't mind me telling you this-?" </div><div>I shake my head. "You know me," I say. </div><div>"You were an intense actor. You left yourself nowhere to go. I like you still." She hesitates. "Stiller, I mean," </div><div>She looks the same but as if a layer of healthy fat has been scraped from her face, revealing the stitching beneath. There is even less of her; she seems a little frail, or fragile. She has always been delicate but now she moves cautiously. </div><div>As we talk I recollect having let her down, but am unable to recall the details. She was active in my mind for the months after our 'holiday' but I found the memory to be less tenacious after relating the story to a friend as a tale of a young man's foolishness and misfortune. When he laughed I forgot: there is nothing as forgiving as a joke. </div><div>However, I have often wished for Florence's advice and support, particularly when the press took a fascinated interest in me, and started to write untrue stories. In the past few years I have played good parts and been praised and well paid. However, my sense of myself has not caught up with the alteration. I have been keeping myself down, and pushing happiness away. "Success hasn't changed you," people tell me, as if it were, a compliment. </div><div>When we say goodbye, Florence tells me when she will next be in the park. "Please come," she says. At home I write down the time and date, pushing the note under a pile of papers. </div><div>She and I are wary with one another, and make only tentative and polite conversation; however, I enjoy sitting beside her on a bench in the sun, outside the teahouse, while her eight I year old plays football. He is a hurt, suspicious boy with hair down to his shoulders, which he refuses to have cut. He likes to fight with bigger children and she does not know what to do with him. Without him, perhaps, she would have got away. </div><div>At the moment I have few friends and welcome her company. The phone rings constantly but I rarely go out or invite anyone round, having become almost phobic where other people are concerned. What I imagine about others I cannot, say, but the human mind is rarely clear in its sight. Perhaps I feel depleted, having just played the lead in a film. </div><div>During the day I go to the studio and record radio plays and audio books. I like learning to use my voice as an instrument. Probably I spend too much time alone, thinking I can give myself everything. My doctor, with whom I drink, is fatuously keen on pills and cheerfulness. He says that if what I have cannot make me happy, nothing will. He would deny the useful facts of human conflict, and wants me to take antidepressants, as if I would rather be paralysed than know my terrible selves. </div><div>Having wondered for months why I was waking up every morning in despair, I have started therapy. I am aware, partly from my relationship with Florence, that that which cannot be said is the most dangerous omission. I am only beginning to understand psychoanalytic theory, yet am inspired by the idea that we do not live on a fine point of consciousness but exist in all areas of our being simultaneously, particularly the dreaming. Until I started lying down in Dr Wallace's room. I had never had such extended conversations about the deepest personal matters. To myself I call analysis - two people talking - 'the apogee of civilisation'. Lying in bed I have begun to go over my affair with Florence. These are more like waking dreams Coleridge's 'flights of lawless speculation' - than considered reflections, as if I am setting myself a subject for the night. Everything returns at this thoughtful age, particularly childhood. </div><div>One afternoon in the autumn, after we have met four or five times, it is wet, and Florence and I sit at a table inside the damp teahouse. The only other customers are an elderly couple. Florence's son sits on the floor drawing. </div><div>"Can't we get a beer?" Florence says. </div><div>"They don't sell it here." </div><div>"What a damned country." </div><div>"Do you want to go somewhere else?" </div><div>She says, "Can you be bothered?" </div><div>"Nope." </div><div>Earlier I notice the smell of alcohol on her. It is a retreat I recognise; I have started to drink with more purpose myself. </div><div>While I am at the counter fetching the tea, I see Florence holding the menu at arms' length; then she brings it closer to her face and moves it away again, seeking the range at which it will be readable. Earlier I noticed a spectacle case in the top of her bag, but had not realised they were reading glasses. </div><div>When I sit down, Florence says, "Last night Archie and I went to see your new film. It was discomfiting to sit there looking at you with him." </div><div>"Did Archie remember me'?" </div><div>"At the end I asked him. He remembered the weekend. He said you had more substance to you than most actors. You helped him." </div><div>"I hope not." </div><div>"I don't know what you two talked about that night, but a few months after your conversation Archie left his job and went into publishing. He accepted a salary cut, but he was determined to find work that didn't depress him. Oddly, he turned out to be very good at it. He's doing well. Like you.' </div><div>"Me? But that is only because of you." I want to give her credit for teaching me something about self-belief and self-determination. "Without you I wouldn't have got off to a good start...." </div><div>My thanks make her uncomfortable, as if I am reminding her of a capacity she does not want to know she is wasting. </div><div>"But It's your advice I want," she says anxiously. "Be straight, as I was with you. Do you think I can return to acting?" </div><div>"Are you seriously considering it?" </div><div>"It's the only thing I want for myself. </div><div>"Florence. I read with you years ago but I have never seen you on stage. That aside, the theatre is not a profession you can return to at will." </div><div>"I've started sending my photograph around," she continues. "I want to play the great parts, the women in Chekhov and Ibsen. I want to howl and rage with passion and fury. Is that funny? Rob, tell me if I'm being a fool. Archie considers it a middle-aged madness. </div><div>"I am all for that," I say. </div><div>As we part she touches my arm and says "the other day. I don't think you saw me or did you?" </div><div>"But I would have spoken." </div><div>"You were shopping in the deli. Was that your wife? The blonde girl-" </div><div>"It was someone else. She has a room nearby." </div><div>"And you-" </div><div>"Florence-" </div><div>"I don't want to pry," she says. "But you used to put your hand on my back, to guide me, like that, through crowds..." </div><div>I do not like being recognised with the girl for fear of it getting in the papers and back to my wife. But I resent having to live a secret life. I am confused. </div><div>"I was jealous," she says. </div><div>"Were you? But why?" </div><div>"I had started to hope ... that it wasn't too late for you and me. I think I care for you more than I do for anybody. That is rare, isn't it?" </div><div>"I've never understood you," I say, irritably. "Why would you marry Archie ... and then start seeing me?" </div><div>It is a question I have never been able to put, fearing she will think I am being critical of her, or that I will have to hear of their ultimate compatibility. </div><div>She says, "I hate to admit it, but I imagined, in some superstitious way that marriage would solve my problems and make me feel secure." When I laugh she looks at me hard. "This raises a question that we both have to ask. </div><div>"What is that?" </div><div>She glances at her son and says softly. "Why do you and I go with people who won't give us enough?" </div><div>I say nothing for a time. Then follows the joke which is not a joke, but which makes us laugh freely for the first time since we met again. I have been reading an account by a contemporary author of his break-up with his partner. It is relentless, and probably because it rings true, has been taken exception to. Playfully I tell Florence that surely divorce is an underestimated pleasure, People speak of the violence of separation, but what of the delight? What could be more refreshing than never having to sleep in the same bed as that rebarbative body, and hear those familiar complaints? Such a moment of deliverance would be one to hug to yourself for ever, like losing one's virginity, or becoming a millionaire. </div><div>I stand at the door of the teahouse to watch her walk back across the park, under the trees. She carries a white umbrella, treading so lightly she barely disturbs the rain drops on the grass, her son running ahead of her. I am certain I can hear laughter hanging in the air like, an ethereal jinn. </div><div>The next time I see her she comes at me quickly, kissing me on both cheeks and saying she wants to tell me something. </div><div>We take the kids to a pub with a garden. I have started to like her shaven-headed boy, Ben, having at first not known how to speak to him. "Like a human being," I decide is the best method. We put my son on a coat on the ground and he bustles about on his hands and bandy legs, nose down, arse sticking up. Ben chases him and hides: the baby's laugh makes us all laugh. Others' pleasure in him increases mine. It has taken a while, but I am getting used to serving and enjoying him, rather than seeing what I want as the important thing. </div><div>"Rob, I've got a job,: she says. "I wrote to them and went in and auditioned. It's a pub theatre, a basement smelling of beer and damp. There's no money, only a cut of the box-office. But it's good work. It is great work!" </div><div>She is playing the mother in The Glass Menagerie. By coincidence, the pub is at the end of my street. I tell her I am delighted. </div><div>"You will come and see me, won't you?" </div><div>"But yes." </div><div>"I often wonder if you're still upset about that holiday." We have never discussed it but now she is in the mood. "I've thought about it a thousand times. I wish Archie hadn't come." </div><div>I laugh. It is too late; how could it matter now? </div><div>She says, "I mean, I wish I hadn't brought him. Sitting in that stationary train with you scowling was the worst moment of my life. But I had thought I was going mad. I had been looking forward to the holiday. The night before we were to leave Archie asked again if I wanted him to come. He could feel how troubled I was. As I packed in the bedroom I realised that if we went away together my marriage would shatter. You were about to go to America. </div><div>Your film would make you successful. Women would want you. I knew you didn't really want me - " </div><div>This is hard. But I understand that Archie is too self absorbed to be disturbed by her. He asks for and takes everything. He does not see her as a problem he has to solve, as I do. She has done the sensible thing, finding a man she cannot make mad. </div><div>She goes on, "I required Archie's strength and security more than passion - or love. That was love, to me. He asked, too, if I were having an affair." </div><div>"To prove that you weren't, you invited him to come." She puts her hand on my arm. "I'll do anything now. Say the word." </div><div>I cannot think of anything I want her to do. </div><div>For a few weeks I do not see her. We are both rehearsing. One Saturday, my wife Helen is pushing the kid in a trolley in the supermarket as I wander about with a basket. Florence comes round a comer and we begin talking at once. She is enjoying the rehearsals. The director does not push her far enough - "Rob, I can do much more!" - but he will not be with her on stage, where she feels 'queenlike'. "Anyhow, we've become friends," she says meaningfully. </div><div>Archie does not like her acting; he does not want strangers looking at her, but he is wise enough to let her follow her wishes. She has got an agent; she is seeking more work. She believes she will make it. </div><div>After our spouses have packed away their groceries, Archie comes over and we are introduced again. He is large; his hair sticks out, his face is ruddy and his eyebrows look like a patch of corn from which a heavy creature has recently risen. Helen looks across suspiciously. Florence and I are standing close to one another; perhaps one of us is touching the other. </div><div>At home I go into my room, hoping Helen will not knock. I suspect she won't ask me who Florence is. She will want to know so much that she won't want to know. </div><div>Without having seen the production, I rouse myself to invite several people from the film and theatre world to see Florence's play. Drinking in the pub beforehand, I can see that to the director's surprise the theatre will be full; he is wondering where all these smart people in deluxe loafers have come from, scattered amongst the customary drinkers with their elbows on the beer-splashed bar, watching football on television with their heads craned up, as if looking for an astronomical wonder. I become apprehensive myself, questioning my confidence in Florence and wondering how much of it is gratitude for her encouragement of me. Even if I have put away my judgement, what does it matter? I seem to have known her for so long that she is not to be evaluated or criticised but is just a fact of my life. The last time we met in the teahouse she told me that eighteen months ago she had a benign lump removed from behind her ear. The fear that it will return has given her a new fervency. </div><div>The bell rings. We go through a door marked 'Theatre and Toilets' and gropingly make our way down the steep, worn stairs into a cellar, converted into a small theatre. The programme is a single sheet, handed to us by the director as we go in. The room smells musty, and despite the dark the place is shoddy. There is a pillar in front of me I could rest my cheek on. Outside I hear car alarms and from upstairs the sound of cheering men. But in this small room the silence is charged by concentration and the hope of some homemade magnificence. For the first time in years I am reminded of the purity and intensity of the theatre. </div><div>When I get out at the interval I notice Archie pulling himself up the stairs behind me. At the top, panting, he takes my arm to steady himself. I buy a drink, and, in order to be alone, go and stand outside the pub. I am afraid that if my friends, the 'important' people, remain after the interval it is because I would disapprove if they left; and if they praise Florence to me, it is only because they would have guessed the ulterior connection. The depth and passion Florence has on stage is clear to me. But I know that that which an artist finds interesting about their own work, the part they consider original and penetrating, will not necessarily compel an audience, who might not even notice it, but only attend to the story. </div><div>Archie's head pokes around the pub door. His eyes find me and he comes out. I notice he has his son, Ben, with him. </div><div>"Hallo Rob, where's Matt?" says Ben. </div><div>"Matt's my son," I explain to Archie. "He is in bed, I hope." </div><div>"You happen to know one another?" Archie says. </div><div>I tug at Ben's baseball cap. "We bump into one another in the park." </div><div>"In the teahouse," says the boy. "He and mummy love to talk." he looks at me. "She would love to act in a film you were in. So would I. I'm going to be an actor. The boys at school think you're the best." </div><div>"Thank you." I look at Archie. "Expensive school too, I bet." </div><div>He stands there looking away but his mind is working. I say to Ben, "What do you think of mummy in this play?" </div><div>"Brilliant." </div><div>"What is your true opinion," says Archie to me, "as a man of the theatre and film?" </div><div>"She seems at ease on stage." </div><div>"Will she go any further?" </div><div>"The more she does it, the better she will get." </div><div>"Is that how it works?" he says. "Is that how you made it?" </div><div>"Partly. I am talented, too." </div><div>He looks at me with hatred and says, "She will do it more, you think?" </div><div>"If she is to improve she will have to." </div><div>He seems both proud and annoyed, with a cloudy look, as if the familiar world is disappearing into the mist. Until now she has followed him. I wonder whether he will be able to follow her, and whether she will want him to. </div><div>I have gone inside and found my friends when he is at my elbow, interrupting, with something urgent to say. </div><div>"I love Florence more and more as time passes," he tells me. "Just wanted you to know that." </div><div>"Yes," I say. "Good." </div><div> "Right," he says. "Right. See you downstairs."</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-70822900991584806572009-03-26T05:55:00.001-07:002009-03-26T05:55:54.773-07:00Ode untuk Sebuah KTP<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">By: Martin Aleida<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">IRAMANI namaku. Umurku tujuh-puluh dua. Tak usah terlalu panjang aku menyebutkan siapa aku. Cukup, katakanlah semua kamp konsentrasi atau penjara paling bengis yang pernah kau tahu. Dan itu adalah juga aku.Usiaku habis percuma ditelan tembok-tembok penjara yang dekil dan menyesakkan. Dan ketika aku ditendang keluar dari sel, aku masih harus menanggungkan perlakuan sewenang-wenang dari satu rezim yang didukung oleh manusia yang terus-menerus kupertanyakan dalam hati, dari manakah mereka mewarisi perangai lalim yang telah memencilkan aku selama tiga belas tahun di dalam kurungan, terutama di penjara wanita Pelatungan. Hanya karena aku seorang istri. Ya, seorang istri. Jika inilah kodrat yang harus kuterima sebagai wanita, maka dia telah kujalani dengan sempurna. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tetapi, bagaimanakah aku harus menjelaskan kepada Tatiana, anakku yang terkecil, yang harus mengikuti aku ke sel penjara mana saja aku dicampakkan bagaikan sampah, yang buat kompos pun tak berguna. Rezim juga telah memperkosa naluri Tatiana, yang selalu ingin menyusu di dadaku, sebagai siksa tambahan bagi ibunya. Telah kubaca berpuluh kali catatan harian Anne Frank. Bisa kubayangkan, ketika larsa sepatu pasukan Nazi berdentam mendekati lemari persembunyiannya, tahulah dia bahwa ajalnya sudah sedekat bendul pintu. Terlahir sebagai Yahudi, dia dipaksa menemukan nasib sebagai buruan. Gadis cilik itu masih lebih mujur dari kami. Dia mungkin telah musnah bersama kepulan gas beracun yang disemburkan ke dalam kamar pengasingannya. Sedangkan kami, aku dan anakku, masih terus berbagi degup jantung, menjaga nyawa, sekalipun sebenarnya kami sudah tersingkir dari keberadaan sebagai manusia yang hidup.Sudahlah, katamu melerai perasaanku. Lupakahlah, Ir Penderitaanmu akan larut dibasuh waktu, begitu kau berupaya menawarkan dendamku.Aku belum bisa menerima bujukanmu itu. Tapi, baiklah kudiamkan saja dulu galau penolakan dari dalam hatiku. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Belasan tahun dikucilkan di dalam sel penjara bisa kutanggungkan, mengapa memendam rasa aku tak kuasa.Tadi pagi aku bangun dengan perasaan yang lain sama sekali. Dalam empat-puluh tahun belakangan ini, tak pernah aku memiliki perasaan sebegitu riang. Membanding-banding, aku teringat bagaimana rasanya pada saat aku melahirkan anakku dulu. Ngeden yang mencemaskan berakhir dengan ketenteraman hati begitu melihat Tatiana yang merah rebah di sampingku. Rasa-rasanya seperti itulah kebahagiaan yang membendung perasaanku sekarang.Aku mengenakan pakaian terbaik. Duduk mengiringi naiknya matahari pagi. Bertambah nyaman rasanya di beranda sesempit ini ketika daun-daun kering berlarian menyentuh ujung-ujung kuku kakiku. Kemarin, ketika aku pulang dari kantor kelurahan, mengambil kartu tanda pendudukku, sudah kupuaskan sepuas-puasnya mata dan hatiku dengan KTP yang baru ini. Rasanya, keterangan diri yang mungil, dan dibalut plastik mengkilap itu, telah memberikan kegembiraan yang jauh lebih besar dibandingkan dengan hari ketika aku digelandang keluar dari Pelatungan, lebih dua puluh tahun yang lampau. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kalau kuingat-ingat, tahulah aku bagaimana kebahagiaan begitu cepat kehilangan semaraknya dalam perjalanan waktu yang panjang. Ah, senangnya mengamat-amati KTP ini. Permukaannya yang mengkilap. Membersitkan kebanggaan. Aku seperti telah menemukan harga diriku kembali. Dunia di luar diriku kini telah menempatkan aku kembali sebagai warga biasa. Lihatlah, namaku ditulis dengan ejaan yang benar. Dengan huruf-huruf hitam yang rata. Pastilah dia diketik dengan menggunakan komputer. Mesin kejayaan manusia yang baru. Bukan mesin tik tua. Dia begitu ringkas sebagai pernyataan kehadiran seseorang di dalam masyarakat. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Memang, ada yang mengatakan kartu ini adalah salah satu bentuk pelanggaran terhadap hak-hak mendasar manusia. Hak bergerak bebas. Karena KTP merupakan perangkat kekuasaan untuk mengamati gerak-gerik warganya. Orang jadi tak bisa bebas bergerak tanpa ada mata yang mengawasinya. Sama dengan sapi yang harus membawa cacat yang ditinggalkan besi merah yang ditancapkan di punggungnya ke manapun dia merumput dan memamah-biak. Tapi, aku tidak termasuk yang hanyut dalam sikap seperti itu. Karena aku memang seorang wanita yang terbuang bersama ribuan orang lain yang senasib. Kalau KTP ini dianggap sebagai kebejatan penguasa, apalagi yang akan dikatakan begitu melihat simbol yang diterakan di pojok kartu ini? Tiga huruf yang menyengsarakan, mematikan...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Besarnya kartu ini hanya tiga jari. Tetapi, betapa sempurna kelegaan hati yang diberikannya. Di pojok kanan atasnya sudah tidak tertera hukuman yang harus kupikul sampai pun aku berangkat ke liang lahat: ETP, eks tahanan politik. Masih kuingat, tanganku gemetar ketika menyerahkan KTP lama kepada orang kelurahan. Aku merasa noda yang dilekatkan pada diriku seperti sudah ditempatkan di dalam perahu perlambang dosa, dan sudah dilepas ke laut yang dalam. Aku tidak sendiri menjalani nasib seperti ini. Dan tak bisa kau bayangkan betapa tertekannya perasaan dipencilkan seperti itu. Bukan aku saja yang harus melata karena cap itu. Juga anak-anakku. Pintu tertutup buat kami untuk memasuki kehidupan yang normal. Kami semua benar-benar menjadi paria karena cap yang melekat di pojok tanda pengenal itu. Lebih dari dua-puluh tahun aku mengantungi hukuman itu. Hanya karena aku seorang istri.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Aku tak tahu apa kesalahan yang dilakukan suamiku menjelang bencana tahun 1965, sehingga dia harus dilenyapkan. Dan istrinya, anak-anaknya yang masih merah, harus menderita. Padahal aku hanyalah seorang istri. Dan buatku, suami adalah seseorang kepada siapa aku berbagi. Naluri mengajari aku untuk setia pada kodrat fisikku, untuk mendekatkan anak-anak pada kedewasaan. Aku tidak dengan sengaja menjauhi gelanggang politik. Aku hanya tidak tertarik. Kupikir aku telah memberikan sumbangan yang besar kepada cita-cita suamiku, apabila aku bisa memegangi tangga kalau dia hendak menjangkau buku yang terletak di deretan teratas dari rak bukunya. Bisa membersihkan kaca-matanya sementara dia mandi. Dia sendiri sudah merasa puas kalau aku mau turut diajak ke kantornya. Terkadang, dia mengiming-iming akan mampir membeli masakan Tionghoa kesukaan kami dalam perjalanan pulang dari kantornya. Sesungguhnya, aku malu untuk mengatakan bahwa dia tetaplah seorang yang hangat, walaupun politik telah mengambilnya dari sisiku.Ketika aku ditanyai berbagai interogator militer sejauh mana keterlibatanku dalam kegiatan suamiku itu, aku jawab bahwa aku hanya menunggu dia menyelesaikan pekerjaannya, menulis editorial di koran yang dia pimpin. Dengan rasa bangga kukatakan bahwa dia tak pernah kehilangan kata-kata ketika berhadapan dengan mesin tiknya. Masih kuingat, beberapa kali aku dipanggilnya supaya mendekat, dan meminjam penitiku untuk mencongkel daki yang melekat di huruf-huruf mesin tik. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cuma meminjamkan peniti, dan aku harus menerima nasib sebagai orang buangan selama tiga-belas tahun. Para penyelidik itu tidak percaya bahwa aku hanya sekadar menemani suamiku mengetik editorial koran. Aku hanya duduk menunggu suamiku yang sedang menulis. Duduk sambil merenda. Kadang-kadang aku ditemani adik iparku. Tetapi, mereka tidak percaya. Dan mereka berharap aku akan berkhianat terhadap suamiku kalau aku disekap sampai ke ujung zaman. Dengan berbuat begitu, mereka malah telah memberikan pelajaran yang baik bahwa kejujuran tak punya tempat berlabuh dalam kezaliman yang mereka puja.Kembali kutatapi KTP yang baru kuterima ini. Wajahnya yang licin bersih. Lihatlah manisnya coat of arms dengan garis-garis merah di pojok kirinya. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Aku merasa memperoleh kebebasan yang kedua kalinya setelah beberapa kali kuyakinkan mataku bahwa tiga huruf kapital yang hitam dan buruk itu sudah disingkirkan dari pojoknya. Sanak famili yang cemas-cemas harap datang merubung ketika aku pulang dari Pelatungan. Kini, aku hanya sendirian merayakan kebebasan ini. Ditemani daun-daun kering yang menggamit-gamit ujung jari kakiku.Tiba-tiba daun pintu berderak di belakangku. Dan sebuah pertanyaan menghentikan monologku dalam diam.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Sedang apa, Bu?," tanya Tatiana. Aku tidak hanya kaget, tetapi juga malu. Tanganku tak lepas dari KTP.Berderai kedua tangannya memelukku dari belakang. Memberikan kecupan persis di ubun-ubunku yang disaput uban yang tipis-tipis. Begitulah caranya membujuk hatiku.Perilakunya itu membuat jariku tergerai, dan matanya menangkap apa yang telah membuat perubahan besar dalam diriku pagi ini. Aku sambut tangannya. Mata Tatiana bolak-balik dari mataku ke KTP yang tergeletak membujur di tapak tanganku. Dia berlutut sembari terus melihat kartu yang alit itu. Seperti tak percaya pada apa yang terpantul ke matanya. Mulutnya agak ternganga. Jari-jari tangannya memagari bibirnya. Meskipun tidak dia ucapkan, aku tahu dia terperanjat melihat pojok KTP itu bersih, begitu murni, begitu membebaskan, dan terang sebiru laut. Aku tahu, jauh di dalam hatinya, dia sedang bertarung dengan pertanyaan bagaimana tiga huruf yang jahat itu sudah tidak nongkrong lagi di pojoknya yang buruk. Huruf-huruf yang juga telah membuat dirinya sebagai tidak ada, walaupun ada. Begitu lama dia meletakkan hatinya pada secarik kartu yang membawa keajaiban itu. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dia tetap berlutut, memegangi dengkulku. Dia seperti baru keluar dari terowongan yang gelap dan panjang. Dan dia menikmati pesona cahaya yang mengapung di depan, yang ditebarkan KTP itu. Tapi, dia cuma diam. Tak berkata barang sepenggal. Membisu seribu laut.Kuceritakan kepadanya mengenai keberangkatanku ke Solo beberapa waktu yang lalu. Terakhir kali aku pergi adalah untuk menyelesaikan penjualan sebidang tanah warisan ayahku. Dan uangnya kugunakan untuk menyingkirkan ETP yang terus-menerus mengepung, membelenggu, hidup kami. Kupikir inilah saatnya untuk menebus pembebasan yang terakhir sebelum aku mati. Aku pergi ke kantor kelurahan beberapa kali, sampai aku menemukan orang yang mau membantu menguruskan sampai aku memperoleh KTP yang bersih, di mana noda ETP yang mengejar-ngejar diriku, diri kami, tersingkir. Dan aku mau membayar dalam jumlah berapa saja."Jadi Ibu menyogok untuk KTP ini?!" Tatiana membelalakkan mata.Aku terpaku.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Ibu menghabiskan jutaan rupiah untuk ini?! Perbuatan sia-sia...!"Aku tahu dia menahan amarah ketika mengatakan bahwa sogok-menyogok sudah bukan menjadi milik zaman anak-anak muda sekarang ini. Dan tanda penderita lepra yang berlambang ETP itu sudah dihapuskan pemerintah. Gong sudah ditalu. Siksa itu harus diakhiri. Karena Presiden Republik yang sekarang ini, ketika dia masih seorang kiai yang buta dengan hati yang baik setinggi langit, telah diterangi Tuhan pikirannya untuk meminta maaf atas kejahatan yang dilakukan terhadap orang-orang seperti aku ini."Uang jutaan itu kan bisa dijadikan Mas Jati modal berjualan. Mbak Rin bisa membuka toko obras. Mbak Win bisa melanjutkan sekolahnya. Mas Awang bisa membuka bengkel... Bisa... bisa... Ibu telah melakukan sesuatu yang tidak perlu. Sesuatu yang percuma..." </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tatiana seperti meratap. Dia anakku yang paling bungsu. Aku tahu hatinya luka, sangat terluka.Aku cuma diam. Terasa jarinya seperti tak mau melepaskan lututku. Aku tahu, di dalam hati dia meratapi kebodohanku. Tapi, aku tak menyesal. Takkan.Bertahun-tahun aku menanti sejak para penguasa mengumandangkan ETP itu tak diperlukan lagi. Tetapi, hukuman yang batil itu masih saja menghantu di pojoknya. Momok itu tetap berjaga-jaga di sudut KTP-ku. Sampai tanganku sendiri yang harus mengenyahkannya dari situ. Kalau tidak, berapa dasawarsa lagi aku harus meringkuk di kungkungan? Waktu telah mengajariku bahwa siapa pun tak bisa membuat kata-kata menemukan kenyataan yang dijanjikannya. Aku tak bisa menunggu. Kepercayaanku timpas sudah... </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-54565909897794775212009-03-26T05:42:00.000-07:002009-03-26T05:43:45.539-07:00Djakarta<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">By: Pramoedya Ananta Toer<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Almanak Seni 1957</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Sekarang tiba gilirannja: dia djuga mau pergi ke Djakarta.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aku takkan salahkan kau, mengapa kau ingin djadi wargakota Djakarta pula. Besok atau lusa keinginan dan tjita itu akan timbul djuga. Engkau di pedalaman terlampau banjak memandang ke Djakarta. Engkau bangunkan Djakarta dalam anganmu dengan segala kemegahan jang tak terdapat di tempatmu sendiri. Kau gandrung padanja. Kau kumpulkan tekat segumpil demi segumpil.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ah, kawan, biarlah aku tjeritakan kau tentang Djakarta kita.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tahun 1942 waktu untuk pertama kalinja aku indjak tanah ibukota ini, stasiun Gambir dikepung oleh delman. Kini delman ini telah hilang dari pemandangan kota —hanja tudjubelas tahun kemudian! Betjak jang menggantikannja. Kuda-kuda diungsikan ke pinggiran kota. Dan kemudian: manusia-manusia mendjadi kuda dan sopirnja sekali: begini tidak ada ongkos pembeli rumput! Inilah Djakarta. Demi uang manusia sedia djadi kuda. Tentu sadja kotamu punja betjak djuga tetapi sudah djadi adat daerah meniru kebobrokan ibukota.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bukan salah manusia ini, kawan. Seperti engkau djuga, orang-orang ini mengumpulkan tekat segumpil demi segumpil perawan-perawan sawah, ladang dan pegunungan, buruh-buruh tani, petani-petani sendiri jang bidang tanahnja telah didih di dalam perasaannja, warga-warga dusun jang dibuat porak poranda oleh gerombolan, peladjar-peladjar jang hendak meneruskan peladjaran, djuga engkau sendiri —dan dengan penuh kepertjajaan akan keindahan nasib baik di ibukota.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kemudian bila mereka sampai di Djakarta kita ini, perawan-perawan pedalaman jang datang kemari sekedar tjari makan, dia dapat makan, lupa tjari makan, dia kepingin kesenangan, dan tiap malam berderet di depan gedung tempat kerdjanja masing-masing. Pria tidak semudah itu mendapat pekerdjaan, dan achirnja mendjadi kuda. Beberapa bulan kemudian paha para pria ini mendjadi begitu penuh sesak dengan otot jang terlampau banjak dipaksa kerdja. Tiap minggu mereka menelan telur ajam mentah. Dan djalan raja memberinja kemerdekaan penuh. Bila datang bahaja ia lepas betja berdjalan sendirian, dan ia melompat ke kaki lima. Djuga tanggung djawab delman hilang di tangan kuda-kuda ini. Beberapa tahun kemudian ia ‘ngedjengkang’ di balenja karena djantungnja mendjadi besar, desakan darahnja meninggi: ia invalid —puluhan! ratusan ribu! kembali ke kampung sebagai sampah. Bila ada kekajaan, adalah kekajaan membual tentang kepelesiran. Tetapi untuk selama-lamanja ia telah mati, sudah lama mati. Djumlah kurban ini banjak daripada kurban revolusi bakalnja.</div><div><br /></div><div>Djadi engkaupun ingin djadi warga Djakarta!</div><div><br /></div><div>Djadi engkaupun ingin djadi sebagian kegalauan ini.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dari rumah masing-masing orang bertekat mentjari uang di Djakarta. Djuga orang-orang daerah jang kaja mengandung maksud: ke Djakarta —hamburkan uangnja. Dan djuga badjingan-badjingan daerah: ke Djakarta —menangguk duit. Demi duit ini pula Djakarta bangun. Sebenarnja sedjak masuknja kompeni ke Djakarta, Djakarta hingga kini belum djuga merupakan kota, hanja kelompokan besar dusun. Hingga sekarang. Tidak ada tumbuh kebudajaan kota jang spesifik, semua dari daerah atau didatangkan dan diimport dari luar negeri: dansa, bioskop, pelesiran, minuman keras dan agama, berbagai matjam agama.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aku lupa, bahwa kau datang hendak kemari untuk beladjar. Tetapi barangkali patut pula kau djadikan kenangan, pusat beladjar daerah kita adalah Djakarta. Tetapi sungguh aku sesalkan, bahwa Djakarta kita bukanlah pusat beladjar jang mampu menjebabkan para mahasiswa ini mendjadi perspektif kesardjanaan Indonesia di kemudian hari. Sisa-sisa intelektualisme karena gebukan balatentara Dai Nippon kini telah bangkit kembali dengan hebatnja. Titel akademi jang diperoleh tiap tahun beku dikantor-kantor, dan daerahmu tetap gersang menginginkan bimbingan. Dan bimbingan itu masih tergantung-gantung djauh di angkasa biru. Semua orang asing, dengan warna politiknja masing-masing, jang memberi kauremah-remah daripada kekajaan kita terbaik jang diisapnja.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aku tahu, engkau orang daerah, orang pedalaman memdewakan pemimpin-pemimpinmu, tetapi aku lebih dekat pada kenjataan ini. Aku tahu engkau berteriak-teriak tentang perekonomian nasional, tetapi basis kehidupan jang didasarkan atas perdagangan eksport, bukan sadja typis negara agraria, djuga negara kolonial. Sepandjang sedjarah negara-negara petani mendjadi negeri djadjahan, dan tetap mendjadi negeri djadjahan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dan bukankah petani-petani daerahmu masih tetap hamba-hamba di djaman Madjapahit, Sriwidjaja atau Mataram? Siang kepunjaan radja, malam kepunjaan durdjana! Dan radja di djaman merdeka kita ini adalah naik-turunnja harga hasil pertaniannja sendiri. Sedang durdjananja tetap djuga durdjana Madjapahit, Sriwidjaja dan Mataram jang dahulu: perampok, pentjuri, gerombolan, pembunuh, pembegal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Djadi beginilah, kawan. Djakarta merupakan impian orang daerah. Semua ingin ke Djakarta. Tapi Djakarta sendiri hanja kelompokan besar dusun, bahkan bahasa perhubungan jang masak tidak punja. Anak-anak mendjadi terlampau tjepat masak, karena baji-baji, kanak-kanak dan orangtuanja digiring ke dalam ruangan-ruangan jang teramat sempit sehingga tiap waktu mereka bergaul begitu rapat. Masalah orangtua tak ada jang tabu lagi bagi kanak-kanak. Kewibawaan orangtua mendjadi hilang, dan segi-segi jang baik daripada perhubungan antara orangtua dan anak dahulu, kini mendjadi tumpul. Agama telah mendjadi gaja kehidupan, bukan perbentengan rohani jang terachir. Aku tjeritai kau, kemarin anakku jang paling amat besar enam umurnja, bertjerita: Orang-orang ini dibuat Tuhan. Tapi apakah randjang ini dibuat olehNja djuga? Ia pandangi aku. Waktu kutanjakan kepadanja bagajmana warna Tuhan: hitam ataukah merah? Ia mendjawab Putih! Ia pilih warna jang tidak mengandung interpretasi, tidak diwarnai oleh pretensi. Sebaliknja kehidupan Djakarta ini—dan barangkali patut benar ini kau ketahui: penuh-sesak dengan interpretasi dan pretensi ini. Di segala lapangan! Lebih mendjengkelkan daripada itu: tiap-tiap orang mau mendesakkan kepunjaannja masing-masing kepada orang lain, kepada lingkungannja. Sungguh-sungguh tiada tertanggungkan. Barangkali kau pernah peladjari sedjarah kemerdekaan berpikir. Bila demikian halnja kau akan dikutuki tjelaka.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tetapi djangan kaukira, bahwa kegalauan ini berarti mutlak. Barangkali adanja kegalauan ini hanjalah suatu salahharap daripadaku sebagai perseorangan. Aku seorang pengarang, dan pengarang di masa kita ini, terutama di ibukota kita, adalah sematjam kerbau jang salah mendarat di tanah tandus. Setidak-tidaknja kegalauan ini memberi rahmat djuga bagi golongan-golongan tertentu, terutama bagi para pedagang nasional, jakni jang berdjualbelikan kenasionalan tanah-airnja dan dirinja. Mungkin engkau tidak setudju. Tetapi barangkali lebih baik demikian. Sungguh lebih menjenangkan bagimu bila masih punja pegangan pada kepertjajaan akan kebaikan segala jang dimiliki oleh tanah-airmu dalam segala segi dan variasinja. Kami golongan pengarang, biasanja tiada lain daripada tenaga penentang, golongan opposisi jang tidak resmi. Resmi: pengarang. Tidak resmi: opposisi periuk terbaik! Dengan sendidirinja sadja begitu, karena kami bitjara dengan seluruh ada kami, kami hanja punja satu moral. Itu pula sebabnja, bila kami tewas, tewas setjara keseluruhan. Bukannja tewas di moral jang pertama, tetapi mendjadi tambun di moral jang keempat! mendjadi melengkung di moral jang ketiga!</div><div><br /></div><div>Aku kira terlampau djauh lantaranku ini. Padamu aku mau bitjara tentang Djakarta kita.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sekali waktu di suatu peristiwa, Omar pernah bitjara dengan sombongnja: Bakar semua chazanah, karena segalanja telah termaktub di dalam Qur’an! Permuntjulan jang grandiues tapi tak punja kontour-kontour kenjataan ini adalah gambaran kedjiwaan Djakarta: rentjana-rentjana besar, galangan-galangan terbesar di Asia Tenggara, tugu terbesar di Asia, kemerosotan moral terbesar! segala terbesar. Tapi tak ada sekrup, tak mur, tak ada ada drat, tak ada nipple, tak ada naaf, tak ada inden dan ring pada permesinan semua ini.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sekali waktu disuatu peritiwa, Pascal mentjatat di dalam bukunja: Manusia hanja sebatang rumput, tetapi rumput jang berakal budi. Dan rumput ini adalah golongan jang mempunjai kesadaran tanpa kekuasaan, terindjak dan termakan. Jang lahir, kering dan mati dengan diam-diam. Namun mendjadi permulaan dari pada kehidupan, seperti jang disaksikan oleh Schweitzer, serta risalah Kan Ying Pien.</div><div><br /></div><div>Berbagai matjam angkatan tjampur-baur mendjadi satu, seperti sambal jang menerbitkan satu rasa, tetapi dengan teropong masih djelas nampak perpisahan antara bagian satu dengan jang lain. Namun pentypean sematjam jang tegakkan oleh Remarque tidak memperlihatkan diri.</div><div><br /></div><div>Barangkali engkau keberatan dengan kata-kataku itu. Tetapi memang demikian. Tjobalah ikuti tulisan-tulisan angkatan demi angkatan. Angkatan jang muda mentjatji jang tua, jang muda ditjatji oleh jang lebih muda. Tetapi, kata Ramadhan KH jang pernah aku dengar, angkatan muda ini bila diberi kesempatan, dia kehilangan segala proporsi dan lemih mendjadi badut lagi. Artinja badut di lingkungan badut. Tokoh-tokoh pemikiran mengetengahkan Wulan Purnomosidhi dan Ada tidaknja Tuhan, di dalam kekatjauan sosiologis, ekonomis dan politis, kultural dan intertual! Apakah kita mesti ikut pukul kaleng untuk membuat segala ini mendjadi bertambah ramai? Sedang anak-anak murid ini telah demikian goiat dengan membanggakan pengetahuannja tentang para tjabul dan ‘rakjat ketjil’ plus saduran Toto Sudarto Bahtiar Tjabul Terhormat karangan Sartre? Plus Margaretta Gouthier saduran Hamka dari Alexander Dumas Jr. Hamka? ja Hamka.</div><div><br /></div><div>Achirnja, seperti kata A.S. Dharta, orang-orang datang dan berkumpul ke Djakarta, mendjadi warga Djakarta, untuk mempertjepatkan keruntuhan kelompokan besar dusun ini. Tambah banjak jang datang tambah tjepat lagi.</div><div><br /></div><div>Selagi aku belum djadi penduduk Djakarta, dambaanku mungkin seperti kau punja. Impian jang indah, bajangan pada pembangunan hari depan. Diri masih penuh diperlengkapi kekuatan, kemampuan dan kepertjajaan diri. Barangkali bagimu segala itu lebih keras lagi. Karena di daerah bertiup angin: orang takkan djadi warganegara jang 100% sebelum melihat Djakarta dengan mata kepala sendiri.</div><div><br /></div><div>Barangkali engkau akan bertanja kepadaku, mengapa tak djuga menjingkirkan diri dari Djakarta! Ah, kau. Golongan kami adalah sematjam kerbau jang mendarat di tanah tandus. Golongan kami reaksioner di lapangan penghidupan. Sekalipun tandusnja penghidupan golongan kami, djustru Djakartalah jang bisa memberi, sekalipun hanja remah-remah para pedagang nasional, atau petani pasar minggu. Tambah lama nasi jang sepiring harus dibagi dengan empat-lima anak-anaknja. Dan anak-anak ini akan mengalami masa kehilangan masa kanak-kanak, masa kanak-kanaknja sendiri. Kanak-kanak Djakarta jang tak punja lapangan bergerak, tak punja lapangan bermain, tak punja daerah perkembangan kedjiwaan, menjurus dari gang dan got, membunuh tiap marga-satwa jang tertangkap oleh matanja. Katak dan ketam dan belut dan burung mengalami likwidasi, di Djakarta! Tetapi njamuk meradjalela, dan tjitjak dan sampah. Djuga mereka ini hidup di alam ketaksenangan. Taman-taman hanja di daerah Menteng dan perkampungan baru. Engkau tahu, djadi orang apa kanak-kanak sematjam ini djadinja di kemudian hari.</div><div><br /></div><div>Engku tahu, ada pernah dibisikkan kepadaku: daerah jang punja taman adalah lahir dan berkembang karena telah menghisap darah daerah jang tak punja taman. Tentu sadja bisikan ini konsekwensi daripada prinsip perdjuangan kelas. Barangkali engkau tak setudju, karena ini membawa-bawa politik atau pergeseran kemasjarakatan jang berwarna politik atau politik ekonomi. Mungkin djuga hanja suatu kedengkian jang tak sehat. Tapi apakah jang dapat kauharapkan dari suatu masjarakat dimana sebahagian besar warganja hidup dalam suasana tak senang, tak ada pegangan, tak ada kepertjajaan pada haridepan! Sedang para pedagang nasional djuga tak punja haridepan, karena kemanisan jang diperolehnja harikini diisapnja habis harikini pula, untuk dirinja sendiri tentu, atas nama kenaikan harga tentu, sehingga mereka mendjadi para turis di daerah kehidupannja sendiri.</div><div><br /></div><div>Segala jang buruk berkembang-biak dengan mantiknja di Djakarta ini. Segi-segi kehidupan amatlah runtjingnja dan melukai orang jang tersinggung olehnja. Tetapi wargakota jang sebelum proklamasi bersikap apatis — apatisnja seorang hamba — kini kulihat apatisnja orang merdeka dengan djiwa hambanja. Bukan penghinaan, sekalipun suatu peringatan itu kadang-kadang terasa</div><div><br /></div><div>sebagai penghinaan. Di dalam kehidupan jang tidak menjenangkan apakah jang tak terasa sebagai penghinaan! Dan tiap titik jang menjenangkan dianggap pudjian, atau setidak-tidaknja setjara subjektif: pengakuan dari pihak luaran akan kesamaan martabat dengan orang atau bangsa jang memang telah merdeka dan tahu mempergunakan kemerdekaannja. Barangkali engkau menghendaki ketegasan utjapan ini. Baiklah aku tegaskan kepadamu: memang wargakota belum lagi 25% bertindak sebagai bangsa merdeka. Anarki ketjil-ketjilan, sebagaimana mereka dahulu dilahirkan dalam lingkungan jang serba ketjil-ketjil pula: buang sampah digot! bandjir tiap hudjan akibatnja; pendudukan tanah orang lain jang disadari benar bukan tanahnja sendiri menurut segala hukum jang ada, sekalipun sah menurut hukum jang dikarang-karangnja sendiri: ketimpangan hak tanah adalah ketimpangan penghidupan, kehidupan dan kesedjahteraan sosial. Mengapa? Karena besok atau lusa tiap orang dapat didorong keluar dari rumah dan pekarangannja sendiri-sendiri. Kedjorokan dan kelalaian jang dengan langsung menudju ke pelanggaran ketertiban bersama. Dan djalan-djalan raja serta segala matjam djalanan umum mendjadi medan permainan Djibril mentjari mangsa. Djuga ini akibat hati orang tidak senang. Bawah sadarnja bilang: dia tak dilindungi hukum — dia, baik jang melanggar maupun jang dilanggar.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nah demikianlah Djakarta kita, sekian tahun setelah merdeka.</div><div><br /></div><div>Barangkali engkau mengagumi kaum tjerdik-pandai jang sering diagungkan namanja disurat-suratkabar. Hanja sedikit di antara mereka itu jang benar-benar bekerdja produktif-kreatif. Jang lain-lain terpaksa mempopulerkan diri agar tak tumbang dimedan penghidupan! Apakah jang telah ditemukan oleh universitas Indonesia selama ini jang punja prestasi internasional! Di lapangan kepolitikan, apakah pantjasila telah melahirkan suatu kenjataan di mana engkau sadar di hatiketjilmu bahwa kau sudah harus merasa berterimakasih. Aku pernah menghitung, dan dalam sehari pada suatu hari jang tak terpilih, diutjapkan limabelas kali kata pantjasila itu baik melalui pers, radio, atau mulut orang. Sedjalan dengan tradisi pendjadjahan jang selalu dideritakan oleh rakjat kita, maka nampak pula garis-garis jang tegas dalam masa pendjadjahan priaji-pedagang ini: orang membangun dari atas. Tanpa pondamen. Ah, kawan, kita mengulangi sedjarah kegagalan revolusi Perantjis.</div><div><br /></div><div>Barangkali kau menjesalkan pandanganku jang pessimistis.</div><div><br /></div><div>Akupun mengerti keberatanmu. Asal sadja kau tidak lupa: sekian tahun merdeka ini belum lagi bitjara apa-apa bagi mereka jang tewas dalam babak pertama revolusi kita. Kalau Anatole France bitjara tentang iblis-iblis jang haus akan darah di masa pemerintahan pergulingan itu, aku bisa djuga bitjara tentang iblis-iblis jang haus akan kurban, akan kaum invalid penghidupan dan kehidupan. Dan bila kurban-kurban dan kaum invalid penghidupan dan kehidupan ini merasa tak pernah dirugikan, itulah tanda jang tepat, bahwa iblis itu telah lakukan apa jang dinamai zakelijkheid dengan pintarnja. Dan bila iblis-iblis ini tetap apa jang biasa dinamai badjingan.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ini bukanlah jang kita kehendaki dengan zakelijkheid!</div><div><br /></div><div>Ini bukanlah jang kita kehendaki dengan kehidupan kesardjanaan! kepriajian dan perdagangan!</div><div><br /></div><div>Sardjana adalah kompas kita, ke mana kita harus pergi mentjari pegangan dalam lalulintas kebendaan di kekinian dan dimasa-masa mendatang. Sardjanamu, sardjanaku, wartawanmu, wartawanku, politisimu, politisiku, melihat adanja kesumbangan, dan: titik, stop. Djuga seperti turis di dalam gelanggang kehidupannja sendiri.</div><div><br /></div><div>Barangkali, engkaupun akan menuduh mengapa aku tak berbuat lain daripada mereka. Tetapi akupun tahu, bahwa engkau tidak melupakan sjarat ini: kekuasaan. Kekuasaan ini akan ditelan lahap-lahap oleh tiap orang, tetapi tidak tiap orang tahu tjaranja mendapatkan dan menelannja. Sematjam kutjingmu sendiri. Sekalipun sedjak lahir kauberi nasi tok, sekali waktu bila ditemukannja daging akan dilahapnja djuga. Djadi kau sekarang tahu segi-segi gelap dari ibukota kita ini. Segi-segi jang terang aku tak tahu samasekali, karena memang hal itu belum lagi diwahjukan kepadaku, baik melalui inderaku jang lima-limanja ataupun jang keenam. Tetapi aku nasihatkan kepadamu, dalam masa kita ini, djanganlah tiap hal kauanggap mengandung kebenaran 100%, dengan menaksir duapuluh prosen pun kau kadang-kadang dihembalang keketjewaan. Djuga demikian halnja dengan uraianku ini.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aku tahu, engkau seorang patriot dalam maksud dan djiwamu, karena engkau orang daerah jang djauh dari kegalauan kota besar, kumpulan besar dusun ini. Engkau akan berdjasa bila bisa membendung tiap orang jang hendak melahirkan diri dari daerahnja hendak memadatkan Djakarta. Tinggallah di daerahmu. Buatlah usaha agar tempatmu mempunjai sekolah menengah atas sebanjak mungkin. Dan buatlah tiap sekolah menengah atas itu mendjadi bunga bangsamu dikemudianhari: djadi sumber kegiatan sosial, sumber kesedaran politik setjara ilmu, sumber kegiatan pentjiptaan dan latihan kerdja. Pernah aku beri tjeramah di kota kelahiranku dua tahun jang lalu: mobilisasilkan tiap murid ini untuk berbakti pada masjarakatnja, untuk beladjar berbakti, untuk membelokkannja daripada intelektualisme jang hanja mengetahui tanpa ketjakapan mempergunakan pengetahuannja. Apa ilmu pasti jang mereka terima itu bagi kehidupannja di kemudianhari bila tidak berguna ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Djangan kausangka, aku hendak mendiktekan kemauanku sendiri. Aku kira aku telah tjukup tua untuk menjatakan semua ini kepadamu—engkau jang kuharapkan djadi pahlawan pembangun daerahmu. Djuga engkau ada merendahkan petani, karena engkau lahir dari golongan prijaji—pendjadjah petani sepandjang sedjarah pendjadjahan: Djepang, Belanda, Inggris, Mataram, Madjapahit, Sriwidjaja, Mataram dan keradjaan-keradjaan perompak ketjil jang tidak mempunjai tempat chusus di dalam sedjarah.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kawan, sebenarnja revolusi kita harus melahirkan satu bangsa baru, bangsa jang nomogeen, bangsa jang bisa menjalurkan kekuasaan itu sehingga mendjadi tenaga pentjipta raksasa, dan bukan menjerbit-njerbitnja dan melahapnja sehingga habis sampai pada kita, pada rakjat jang ketjil ini. Dari dulu aku telah bilang kekuasaan dan kewibawaan kandas di tangan para petugas. Petugas jang benar-benar pada tempatnja hanja sedikit, dan suaranja biasa habis punah ditelan agitasi politik — sekalipun tiap orang tahu ini bukan masa agitasi lagi, kalau menjadari gentingnja situasi tanahairnja dalam lalulintas sedjarah dunia !</div><div><br /></div><div>Kita mesti kerdja.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tetapi apa jang mesti kita kerdjakan, bila mereka jang kerdja tak mendapat penghargaan dan hasil sebagaimana mesti ia terima ?</div><div><br /></div><div>Aku kira takkan habis-habisnja ngomong tentang Djakarta kita, pusat pemerintahan nasional kita ini. Setidak-tidaknja aku amat berharap pada kau, orang daerah, orang pedalaman, bakar habis keinginan ke Djakarta untuk menambah djumlah tugu kegagalan revolusi kita. Bangunkan daerahmu sendiri. Apakah karena itu engkau djadi federalis, aku tak hiraukan lagi. Dulu sungguh mengagetkan hatiku mendengar bisikan orang pada telingaku: mana jang lebih penting, kemerdekaan ataukah persatuan? Dan kuanggap bisikan ini sebagai benih-benih federalisme. Aku tak hiraukan lagi apakah federalisme setjara sadar dianggap djuga sebagai kedjahatan atau tidak! Setidak-tidaknja aku tetap berharap kepadamu, bangunkan daerahmu sendiri. Tak ada gunanja kau melantjong ke ibukota untuk mentjontoh kefatalan di sini.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kawan, sekianlah.</div><div><br /></div><div>Djakarta, 17-XII-1955.</div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-44748656388378074392009-03-26T05:41:00.001-07:002009-03-26T05:41:40.942-07:00Late Gathering<div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">By: John Cheever</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It had rained hard early in August so the leaves were off all the trees. In the sunlight the hills were like scorched pastry and when there was no sun the meadows were gray and the trees were black and the clean sky parted in firm lines down onto the smooth horizon. Most of the guests had gone away but some of the guests remained.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In the evening Richard and Fred walked down to the formal pond in the sand pit and watched the swans drift in the wind. Richard woke early every morning and looked at the hills. Then he shook off his pyjamas and caught his body swinging past the glass panes in the small win dow. His body was a lined angular whiteness passing the small panes in the window when he was not looking.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Fred did not get up until noon and the sun was hot on the roofs or the rain had stopped and the foliage was brittle with water. The coals in the small hearth were black and he had to heat his coffee. Amy told him that if he would come down sooner he would not have to drink cold coffee. Amy ran her eyes down the length of red carpet and laughed like a gramophone. Some of the guests were walking up and down the veran dah wondering if it were going to rain, and the ducks came out of the gray shed and went to the small pool in the bottom of the sand pit.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A lady with a staff of black hair pulled back from her forehead and broken over the round of her skull spent most of the afternoons and a great many of the evenings eating sandwiches and telling everyone how beautiful Switzerland was.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You have never really seen the fields I have. You do not know what a flowered meadow is. You have never walked into fields that were blue and white and yellow and every flower as perfect as the nipples on your breast. Curved just so, colored so lightly, and you have never heard the sound of running water. Oh no, you have never heard the sound of running water.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"You have never lived by a little stream that made a sound all day and all night. You do not know what it is to go away and not hear the little stream any more. It is like silence to you. Yes, it is like silence to you.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And the stars? No. You do not know what stars are like. You have never been near enough to the stars to see the long streaming continuation of one line into another. You have never been so high that from your verandah the birds were like level wheels in the meadow and the mead ows like patches of juniper. Oh no. You do not know. Enormous meadows like mere patches of juniper up on the hillside where there are no trees.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"And perhaps you have lived so high on a hill that the mist came up from the patched meadows like a pitted fruit and gathered in circles and little whirlpools? You have never seen a thick mist stream through the doorway and flatten on the ceiling." She would tap her foot on the flowered linoleum and lift up the corner of a sandwich. "You do not know how enormous things can be and I am afraid that you will never know."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Fred and Richard went for walks together in the hills and often stayed all day. They took their books and sandwiches and sometimes bread and cheese and bad wine. They bent their backs over the round of the hill and watched the clouds and, when there were no clouds, the trees break along the wind. There was no need of speaking. A gramophone was a great responsibility. Resting on their backs against the flank of a broken hill they instinctively felt that the silence was going to lapse into the scratching of a gramophone needle and someone would have to crank the machine. There was an enormous responsibility in choosing one side or another of the disk.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Sitting on the top of the hill they could see Amy lean from the cross windows and shout at the cows. The foliage was dead and the flagpole had been taken down because of the strong wind. In the long vacant drawing room the stiff twigs of the bridal veil* pulled and scuttled over the clean glass.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>On the other side they could see hills drop ping onto hills dropping into the ocean. They could see Chestnut Hill and Break Hill ram one another and push the small scrub pines down * This is probably a reference to bridal wreath", a flowering bush of the spiraea family. -Ed. over the beach. In the empty weather when there was no sun they could hear the ocean make a great noise on the rocks and speculate on the color and the formation of the waves. Often they did not know how they spent whole days in the hills lying on the sharp grass wondering about one another.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Amy said the Russian lady with the broken hair had never been to Switzerland but that she had seen a great many milk chocolate advertise ments. Amy said that the Russian lady with the vacant eyes was simply waiting for her son to come from a college out west and take her back to Cambridge. People began to wonder if she even had a son who was coming from out of the west to take her back to Cambridge. She sat in her black brocade pyjamas on the verandah and de scribed the milk chocolate advertisements and everyone listened to her because she was so very, very beautiful.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In the delicate light of the early evening Fred and Richard came down from out of the hills and said good afternoon to everyone. Fred traced a white iris with the toe of his boot on the flowered linoleum. Richard bent over the whitewashed railing and said how beautiful everything was. Amy was in the corner talking to Jack and asking him not to bring down any more gin because she didn't like to start drinking down here because down here it was not like in the city and in the city people could not stand the pace and it was all right to drink but down here there was a pace that people could adjust themselves to and there was no need of drinking and it was going to be one place where sensitive people could come and stand the realization of being sober.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When Ruth played the piano it was very nice also and Fred and Richard dusted the white wash from their trousers and stood close to one another listening to the music roll out of the doorway and heave over the stubble of unkempt lawn. Because the leafless trees made it look much later in the season than it really was, the awning had been taken down from the verandah and the black metal skeleton shot off the roof and hung between the floor and the railing like a vacant elbow. Such muscle in the awning frame Ruth would say and drag her fingers over the dry ivory like little white rakes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Fred and Richard felt that a clock was running down somewhere and that someone would have to wind up the clock in a little while. Amy sat on the blue wooden balcony with Jack and talked about how fine and lovely everything had been before people started to go to the city and get drunk.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"People who used to come out here eight years ago and find the place restful now want to get drunk after their first meal. They find the tempo of nature almost more unbearable than the tempo of New York. Instead of finding rest in the country they become nervous wrecks. I do not understand it, no I do not understand it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When Richard undressed, his body was warm like a well-lit room and he spent a lot of time jumping up and down before the oval mirror. He could hear Fred walking down the corridor in his leather slippers and he crossed his legs and lit a cigarette. Fred came in and said good night and went away again. Richard noticed sharp colors, brilliant shadows and the manner in which the boards were placed in the floor. He remembered a great many numbered forms and objects with names on them so that he could tell them that it was half past eleven when the Huntington Avenue trolley car crashed into the one roaring down Massachusetts Avenue in the direction of the river. In this way he went to sleep and often when he dressed in the morning it was raining and the window was running with the ugly shapes of flat water.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Ruth got a letter from her brother at the farm saying that he would have to close up be cause the deer had destroyed whole sections of his orchard. Fred thought it was all very beau tiful with the slender arched animals eating the delicate boughs and Amy put on an evening gown and came down to supper after everyone had been working all day.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There were so few guests now that they could all be seated in the dining room and Amy carved the roast at the table. Everyone talked and the meat fell away under the knife. In the dining room the curtains had not been hung yet but someone had started to put back the pictures on the yellow plaster. Amy asked Richard if he would have more meat and looked out of the window. It would be a month now and the dry snows would be coming in from the frozen har bor. Then she remembered that it was not as late as she thought it was but that the rain had driven the leaves from the trees and it was really only the beginning of the autumn.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In the middle of the meal a car came up the drive and Amy rose in her ball dress and ran to the door. A lot of people came in and she kissed them and took their coats off. Then they sat down at the table and she was busy carving the meat and keeping the coffee percolators full.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>That night Amy told Richard that there were not enough beds and that he would either have to sleep with Fred or go out to the bungalow. The Russian lady told him that he had better sleep in the bungalow and he said that he would sleep in the bungalow'.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Amy wrote her name on the window and kept reminding herself that it really was only the beginning of autumn even if the trees were bare.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-72341531202158688072009-03-11T07:12:00.000-07:002009-03-11T07:16:53.828-07:00Memories of My Melancholy Whores<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">By: Gabriel García Márquez</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"He was not to do anything in bad taste, the woman of the inn warned old Eguchi. He was not to put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl, or try anything else of that sort."</span><br /><br />--YASUNARI KAWABATA, <span style="font-style: italic;">House of the Sleeping Beauties </span><br /><br /><br />1<br /><br />THE YEAR I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin. I thought of Rosa Cabarcas, the owner of an illicit house who would inform her good clients when she had a new girl available. I never succumbed to that or to any of her many other lewd temptations, but she did not believe in the purity of my principles. Morality, too, is a question of time, she would say with a malevolent smile, you'll see. She was a little younger than I, and I hadn't heard anything about her for so many years that she very well might have died. But after the first ring I recognized the voice on the phone, and with no preambles I fired at her: "Today's the day."<br /> She sighed: Ah, my sad scholar, you disappear for twenty years and come back only to ask for the impossible. She regained mastery of her art at once and offered me half a dozen delectable options, but all of them, to be frank, were used. I said no, insisting the girl had to be a virgin and available that very night. She asked in alarm: What are you trying to prove? Nothing, I replied, wounded to the core, I know very well what I can and cannot do. Unmoved, she said that scholars may know it all, but they don't know everything: The only Virgos left in the world are people like you who were born in August. Why didn't you give me more time? Inspiration gives no warnings, I said. But perhaps it can wait, she said, always more knowledgeable than any man, and she asked for just two days to make a thorough investigation of the market. I replied in all seriousness that in an affair such as this, at my age, each hour is like a year. Then it can't be done, she said without the slightest doubt, but it doesn't matter, it's more exciting this way, what the hell, I'll call you in an hour.<br /> I don't have to say so because people can see it from leagues away: I'm ugly, shy, and anachronistic. But by dint of not wanting to be those things I have pretended to be just the opposite. Until today, when I have resolved to tell of my own free will just what I'm like, if only to ease my conscience. I have begun with my unusual call to Rosa Cabarcas because, seen from the vantage point of today, that was the beginning of a new life at an age when most mortals have already died.<br /> I live in a colonial house, on the sunny side of San Nicolás Park, where I have spent all the days of my life without wife or fortune, where my parents lived and died, and where I have proposed to die alone, in the same bed in which I was born and on a day that I hope will be distant and painless. My father bought the house at public auction at the end of the nineteenth century, rented the ground floor for luxury shops to a consortium of Italians, and reserved for himself the second floor, where he would live in happiness with one of their daughters, Florina de Dios Cargamantos, a notable interpreter of Mozart, a multilingual Garibaldian, and the most beautiful and talented woman who ever lived in the city: my mother.<br /> The house is spacious and bright, with stucco arches and floors tiled in Florentine mosaics, and four glass doors leading to a wraparound balcony where my mother would sit on March nights to sing love arias with other girls, her cousins. From there you can see San Nicolás Park, the cathedral, and the statue of Christopher Columbus, and beyond that the warehouses on the river wharf and the vast horizon of the Great Magdalena River twenty leagues distant from its estuary. The only unpleasant aspect of the house is that the sun keeps changing windows in the course of the day, and all of them have to be closed when you try to take a siesta in the torrid half-light. When I was left on my own, at the age of thirty-two, I moved into what had been my parents' bedroom, opened a doorway between that room and the library, and began to auction off whatever I didn't need to live, which turned out to be almost everything but the books and the Pianola rolls.<br /> For forty years I was the cable editor at _El Diario de La Paz__, which meant reconstructing and completing in indigenous prose the news of the world that we caught as it flew through sidereal space on shortwaves or in Morse code. Today I scrape by on my pension from that extinct profession, get by even less on the one I receive for having taught Spanish and Latin grammar, earn almost nothing from the Sunday column I've written without flagging for more than half a century, and nothing at all from the music and theater pieces published as a favor to me on the many occasions when notable performers come to town. I have never done anything except write, but I don't possess the vocation or talents of a narrator, have no knowledge at all of the laws of dramatic composition, and if I have embarked upon this enterprise it is because I trust in the light shed by how much I have read in my life. In plain language, I am the end of a line, without merit or brilliance, who would have nothing to leave his descendants if not for the events I am prepared to recount, to the best of my ability, in these memories of my great love.<br /> On my ninetieth birthday I woke, as always, at five in the morning. Since it was Friday, my only obligation was to write the signed column published on Sundays in _El Diario de La Paz__. My symptoms at dawn were perfect for not feeling happy: my bones had been aching since the small hours, my asshole burned, and thunder threatened a storm after three months of drought. I bathed while the coffee was brewing, drank a large cup sweetened with honey, had two pieces of cassava bread, and put on the linen coverall I wear in the house.<br /> The subject of that day's column, of course, was my ninetieth birthday. I never have thought about age as a leak in the roof indicating the quantity of life one has left to live. When I was very young I heard someone say that when people die the lice nesting in their hair escape in terror onto the pillows, to the shame of the family. That was so harsh a warning to me that I let my hair be shorn for school, and the few strands I have left I still wash with the soap you would use on a grateful fleabitten dog. This means, I tell myself now, that ever since I was little my sense of social decency has been more developed than my sense of death.<br /> For months I had anticipated that my birthday column would not be the usual lament for the years that were gone, but just the opposite: a glorification of old age. I began by wondering when I had become aware of being old, and I believe it was only a short time before that day. At the age of forty-two I had gone to see the doctor about a pain in my back that interfered with my breathing. He attributed no importance to it: That kind of pain is natural at your age, he said.<br /> "In that case," I said, "what isn't natural is my age."<br /> The doctor gave me a pitying smile. I see that you're a philosopher, he said. It was the first time I thought about my age in terms of being old, but it didn't take me long to forget about it. I became accustomed to waking every day with a different pain that kept changing location and form as the years passed. At times it seemed to be the clawing of death, and the next day it would disappear. This was when I heard that the first symptom of old age is when you begin to resemble your father. I must be condemned to eternal youth, I thought, because my equine profile will never look like my father's raw Caribbean features or my mother's imperial Roman ones. The truth is that the first changes are so slow they pass almost unnoticed, and you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside.<br /> In my fifth decade I had begun to imagine what old age was like when I noticed the first lapses of memory. I would turn the house upside down looking for my glasses until I discovered that I had them on, or I'd wear them into the shower, or I'd put on my reading glasses over the ones I used for distance. One day I had breakfast twice because I forgot about the first time, and I learned to recognize the alarm in my friends when they didn't have the courage to tell me I was recounting the same story I had told them a week earlier. By then I had a mental list of faces I knew and another list of the names that went with each one, but at the moment of greeting I didn't always succeed in matching the faces to the names.<br /> My sexual age never worried me because my powers did not depend so much on me as on women, and they know the how and the why when they want to. Today I laugh at the eighty-year-old youngsters who consult the doctor, alarmed by these sudden shocks, not knowing that in your nineties they're worse but don't matter anymore: they are the risks of being alive. On the other hand, it is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things, though memory does not often fail with regard to things that are of real interest to us. Cicero illustrated this with the stroke of a pen: _No old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure__.<br /> With these reflections, and several others, I had finished a first draft of my column when the August sun exploded among the almond trees in the park, and the riverboat that carried the mail, a week late because of the drought, came bellowing into the port canal. I thought: My ninetieth birthday is arriving. I'll never know why, and don't pretend to, but it was under the magical effect of that devastating evocation that I decided to call Rosa Cabarcas for help in celebrating my birthday with a libertine night. I'd spent years at holy peace with my body, devoting my time to the erratic rereading of my classics and to my private programs of concert music, but my desire that day was so urgent it seemed like a message from God. After the call I couldn't go on writing. I hung the hammock in a corner of the library where the sun doesn't shine in the morning, and I lay down in it, my chest heavy with the anxiety of waiting.<br /> I had been a pampered child, with a mother of many talents who died of consumption at the age of fifty and a formalistic father who never acknowledged an error and died in his widower's bed on the day the Treaty of Neerlandia was signed, putting an end to the War of the Thousand Days and the countless civil wars of the previous century. Peace changed the city in a way that had not been foreseen or desired. A crowd of free women enriched to the point of delirium the old taverns along Calle Anche, which later was known as Camellón Abello, and now is called Paseo Colón, in this city of my soul loved so much by both natives and outsiders for the good character of its people and the purity of its light.<br /> I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay, and the few who weren't in the profession I persuaded, by argument or by force, to take money even if they threw it in the trash. When I was twenty I began to keep a record listing name, age, place, and a brief notation on the circumstances and style of lovemaking. By the time I was fifty there were 514 women with whom I had been at least once. I stopped making the list when my body no longer allowed me to have so many and I could keep track of them without paper. I had my own ethics. I never took part in orgies or in public encounters, and I did not share secrets or recount an adventure of the body or the soul, because from the time I was young I realized that none goes unpunished.<br /> The only unusual relationship was the one I maintained for years with the faithful Damiana. She was almost a girl, Indianlike, strong, rustic, her words few and brusque, who went barefoot so as not to disturb me while I was writing. I remember I was reading _La lozana andaluza--The Haughty Andalusian Girl__--in the hammock in the hallway, when I happened to see her bending over in the laundry room wearing a skirt so short it bared her succulent curves. Overcome by irresistible excitement, I pulled her skirt up in back, pulled her underwear down to her knees, and charged her from behind. Oh, Señor, she said, with a mournful lament, that wasn't made for coming in but for going out. A profound tremor shook her body but she stood firm. Humiliated at having humiliated her, I wanted to pay her twice what the most expensive women cost at the time, but she would not take a cent, and I had to raise her salary calculated on the basis of one mounting a month, always while she was doing the laundry, and always from the back.<br /> At one time I thought these bed-inspired accounts would serve as a good foundation for a narration of the miseries of my misguided life, and the title came to me out of the blue: _Memories of My Melancholy Whores__. My public life, on the other hand, was lacking in interest: both parents dead, a bachelor without a future, a mediocre journalist who had been a finalist four times in the Poetic Competition, the Juegos Florales, of Cartagena de Indias, and a favorite of caricaturists because of my exemplary ugliness. In short, a wasted life off to a bad start beginning on the afternoon my mother led me by the hand when I was nineteen years old to see if _El Diario de La Paz__ would publish a chronicle of school life that I had written in my Spanish and rhetoric class. It was published on Sunday with an encouraging introduction by the editor. Years later, when I learned that my mother had paid for its publication and for the seven that followed, it was too late for me to be embarrassed, because my weekly column was flying on its own wings and I was a cable editor and music critic as well.<br /> After I obtained my _bachillerato__ with a diploma ranked excellent, I began teaching classes in Spanish and Latin at three different public secondary schools at the same time. I was a poor teacher, with no training, no vocation, and no pity at all for those poor children who attended school as the easiest way to escape the tyranny of their parents. The only thing I could do for them was to keep them subject to the terror of my wooden ruler so that at least they would take away with them my favorite poem: _O Fabio, O sorrow, what you see now, these fields of desolation, gloomy hills, were once the famous fair Italica.__Only as an old man did I happen to learn the nasty name the students called me behind my back: Professor Gloomy Hills.<br /> This was all that life gave me, and I have never done anything to obtain more. I ate lunch alone between classes, and at six in the evening I would go to the editorial offices of the paper to hunt for signals from sidereal space. At eleven, when the edition closed, my real life began. I slept in the red-light district, the Barrio Chino, two or three times a week, and with such a variety of companions that I was twice crowned client of the year. After supper at the nearby Café Roma I would choose a brothel at random and slip in through the back door. I did this because it amused me to, but in the end it became part of my work thanks to the careless speech of political bigwigs who would tell state secrets to their lovers for the night, never thinking they were overheard by public opinion through the cardboard partitions. By this means, of course, I also learned that they attributed my inconsolable bachelorhood to a nocturnal pederasty satisfied by orphan boys on the Calle del Crimen. I had the good fortune to forget this, among other sound reasons because I also heard the positive things said about me, which I appreciated for their true value.<br /> I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives. Since my retirement I have had little to do except take my pieces to the paper on Friday afternoons or fulfill other obligations that have a certain significance: concerts at Bellas Artes, painting exhibitions at the Centro Artístico, of which I am a founding member, an occasional civic conference at the Society for Public Improvement, or an important event like Fábregas's engagement at the Teatro Apolo. As a young man I would go to the open-air movie theaters, where we could be surprised by a lunar eclipse or by a case of double pneumonia from a downpour gone astray. But what interested me more than films were the little birds of the night who would go to bed with you for the price of a ticket, or at no cost, or on credit. Movies are not my genre. The obscene cult of Shirley Temple was the final straw.<br /> My only travels were four trips to the Juegos Florales in Cartagena de Indias, before I was thirty, and a bad night aboard a motor launch, when I was invited by Sacramento Montiel to the inauguration of one of her brothels in Santa Marta. As for my domestic life, I don't eat very much and am easy to please. When Damiana grew old she stopped cooking for me, and since then my only regular meal has been a potato omelet at the Café Roma after the paper closes.<br /> And so, on the eve of my ninetieth birthday, I had no lunch and could not concentrate on reading as I waited to hear from Rosa Cabarcas. The cicadas were chirruping as loud as they could in the twoo'clock heat, and the sun's journey past the open windows forced me to move the hammock three times. It always seemed to me that my birthday fell at the hottest time of the year, and I had learned to tolerate it, but my mood that day made this difficult. At four o'clock I tried to calm my spirit with Johann Sebastian Bach's six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in the definitive performance by Don Pablo Casals. I consider them the most accomplished pieces in all of music, but instead of soothing me as usual they left me in an even worse state of prostration. I fell asleep during the second, which I think lags somewhat, and in my sleep I confused the cello's lament with that of a melancholy ship that was leaving. At almost the same time the telephone woke me, and the rusted voice of Rosa Cabarcas brought me back to life. You have a fool's luck, she said. I found a little thing even better than what you wanted, but there's one drawback: she just turned fourteen. I don't mind changing diapers, I said as a joke, not understanding her motives. I'm not worried about you, she said, but who's going to pay me for three years in jail?<br /> Nobody was going to pay for them, she least of all, of course. She harvested her crop among the minors for sale in her shop, girls she broke in and squeezed dry until they moved on to a worse life as graduate whores in the historic brothel of Black Eufemia. She had never paid a fine, because her courtyard was the arcadia of local officialdom, from the governor to the lowest hanger-on in the mayor's office, and it was inconceivable that the owner would not have the power to break the law to her heart's content. Which meant her last-minute scruples were intended only to derive profit from her favors: the more punishable they were, the more expensive they would be. The question was settled with a two-peso increase in fees, and we agreed that at ten that night I would be at her house with five pesos in cash, payable in advance. Not a minute earlier, since the girl had to feed her younger brothers and sisters and put them to sleep and help her mother, crippled by rheumatism, into bed.<br /> There were four hours to wait. As they passed, my heart filled with an acidic foam that interfered with my breathing. I made a useless effort to help time along with the procedures of dressing. Not surprising, of course, if even Damiana says I dress with all the rituals of a bishop. I shaved with my barber's straight razor and had to wait until the water for the shower cooled, because it had been heated in the pipes by the sun, and the simple effort of drying myself with the towel made me sweat all over again. I dressed in accordance with the night's good fortune: a white linen suit, a blue-striped shirt with a collar stiffened by starch, a tie of Chinese silk, boots rejuvenated with zinc white, and a watch of fine gold, its chain fastened at the buttonhole on my lapel. Then I folded the trouser cuffs under so that no one would notice the inches I've shrunk.<br /> I have a reputation as a miser because no one can imagine I'm as poor as I am if I live where I live, but the truth is that a night like this was far beyond my means. From the money box hidden under my bed I took out two pesos to rent the room, four for the owner, three for the girl, and five in reserve for my supper and other minor expenses. In other words, the fourteen pesos the paper pays me for a month of Sunday columns. I hid them in a secret pocket inside my waistband, and I sprayed on the Florida Water of Lanman & Kemp-Barclay & Co. Then I felt the clawing of panic, and at the first stroke of eight I groped my way down the dark stairs, sweating with fear, and went out into the radiant night before my birthday.<br /> The weather had cooled. On the Paseo Colón groups of men were arguing at the top of their voices about soccer among the array of taxis parked in the middle of the sidewalk. A brass band played a languid waltz under the alameda of blossoming _matarratón__trees. One of the poor little whores who hunt solemn clients on the Calle de los Notarios asked me for the usual cigarette, and I gave my usual answer: Today it's thirty-three years, two months, and seventeen days since I stopped smoking. When I passed El Alambre de Oro I glanced at myself in the lighted windows, and I didn't look the way I felt but older, dressed in shabbier clothes.<br /> A little before ten I climbed into a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the Cementerio Universal so he wouldn't know where I was really going. Amused, he looked at me in the mirror and said: Don't scare me like that, Don Scholar, I hope God keeps me as alive as you are. We got out together in front of the cemetery because he didn't have change and we had to get some in La Tumba, a destitute tavern where the poor drunkards of the small hours weep for their dead. When we had settled accounts, the driver said to me in a serious voice: Be careful, Señor, Rosa Cabarcas's house isn't even a shadow of what it was. All I could do was thank him, convinced, like everyone else, that there was no secret under the sun for the drivers on Paseo Colón.<br /> I walked into a poor district that had nothing to do with the one I had known in my day. It had the same wide streets of hot sand, houses with open doors, walls of rough wooden planks, roofs of bitter palm, and gravel courtyards. But its people had lost their tranquility. In most of the houses there were wild Friday parties with drums and cymbals that reverberated in your gut. For fifty centavos anybody could go into the party he liked best, but he could also stay outside and dance on the sidewalk to the music. I walked, worried the earth would swallow me up in my dandy's outfit, but nobody paid attention to me except for an emaciated mulatto who sat dozing in the doorway of a tenement house.<br /> "Go with God, Doctor," he shouted with all his heart, "and happy fucking!"<br /> What could I do but thank him? I had to stop at least three times to catch my breath before I reached the top of the last incline. From there I saw the enormous copper moon coming up at the horizon, and an unexpected urgency in the belly made me fearful of the outcome, but that passed soon enough. At the end of the street, where the neighborhood turned into a forest of fruit trees, I went into Rosa Cabarcas's shop.<br /> She didn't look the same. She had been the most discreet madam and for that same reason the best known, a very large woman whom we had wanted to crown as a sergeant in the fire department, as much for her corpulence as for her efficiency in putting out fires among her clientele. But solitude had shrunk her body, withered her skin, and sharpened her voice with so much skill that she resembled an aged little girl. All that was left to her from the old days were her perfect teeth, along with one she had capped with gold for coquettish reasons. She dressed in strict mourning for the husband who had died after fifty years of a shared life, added to which was a kind of black bonnet for the death of her only child, who used to assist her in her illicit activities. Only her clear, cruel eyes were still animated, and because of them I realized her character had not changed.<br /> The shop had a dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and almost nothing for sale on the shelves, which did not even serve as a screen for a notorious business that everyone knew about but no one acknowledged. Rosa Cabarcas was taking care of a client when I tiptoed in. I don't know if she really did not recognize me or if she was pretending for the sake of appearances. I sat on a bench to wait while she finished up, and in my memory I tried to reconstruct her as she had been. More than a few times, when both of us were strong and healthy, she had saved me from my own delusions. I think she read my mind because she turned toward me and scrutinized me with alarming intensity. Time doesn't go by for you, and she heaved a mournful sigh. I wanted to flatter her: It does for you, but it makes you better. I'm serious, she said, it's even helped to revive your dead horse's face a little. It must be because I changed brothels, I said to tease her. She became animated. As I remember, you had the tool of a galley slave, she said. How's it behaving? I evaded the question: The only thing different since the last time we saw each other is that sometimes my asshole burns. Her diagnosis was immediate: Lack of use. I have it only for the use God intended, I said, but it was true that it had burned for some time, always when the moon was full. Rosa searched through her sewing kit and opened a little tin of green salve that smelled of arnica liniment. You tell the girl to rub it in with her finger, like this, and she moved her index finger with brazen eloquence. I replied that thanks be to God I was still capable of getting along without peasant ointments. She mocked me, saying: Ah, Maestro, excuse me for living. And turned to business.<br /> The girl had been in the room since ten, she told me; she was beautiful, clean, and well-mannered, but dying of fear because a friend of hers who ran away with a stevedore from Gayra had bled to death in two hours. But then, Rosa admitted, it's understandable because the men from Gayra are famous for making she-mules sing. And she returned to her subject: Poor thing, besides all that she has to work the whole day attaching buttons in a factory. It didn't seem to me like such hard work. That's what men think, she replied, but it's worse than breaking rocks. She went on to confess that she had given the girl a mixture of bromide and valerian to drink, and now she was asleep. I was afraid her compassion might be another trick to raise the price, but no, she said, my word is as good as gold. With set rules: each thing requiring separate payment, in cash and in advance. And so it was.<br /> I followed her across the courtyard, moved by her wrinkled skin and the difficulty she had walking because of her swollen legs, encased in heavy cotton stockings. The full moon was climbing to the middle of the sky and the world looked as if it were submerged in green water. Near the shop was a canopy made of palm for the wild revels held by public administrators, with a good number of leather stools, and hammocks hanging from the wooden columns. In the back courtyard, where the forest of fruit trees began, there was a gallery of six unplastered adobe rooms with burlap windows to keep out mosquitoes. The only one that was occupied had a dim light and Toña la Negra singing a song of failed love on the radio. Rosa Cabarcas sighed: The bolero is life. I agreed, but until today I haven't dared write it. She pushed the door, went in for a moment, and came out again. She's still asleep, she said. You ought to let her rest for as long as her body needs it, your night is longer than hers. I was bewildered: What do you think I should do? You ought to know, she said with unwarranted placidity, there's _some__ reason you're a scholar. She turned and left me alone with my terror.<br /> There was no escape. I went into the room, my heart in confusion, and saw the girl sleeping in the enormous bed for hire, as naked and helpless as the day she was born. She lay on her side, facing the door, illuminated from the ceiling by an intense light that spared no detail. I sat down to contemplate her from the edge of the bed, my five senses under a spell. She was dark and warm. She had been subjected to a regimen of hygiene and beautification that did not overlook even the incipient down on her pubis. Her hair had been curled, and she wore natural polish on the nails of her fingers and toes, but her molasses-colored skin looked rough and mistreated. Her newborn breasts still seemed like a boy's, but they appeared full to bursting with a secret energy that was ready to explode. The best part of her body were her large, silent-stepping feet with toes as long and sensitive as fingers. She was drenched in phosphorescent perspiration despite the fan, and the heat became unbearable as the night progressed. It was impossible to imagine what her face was like under the paint applied with a heavy hand, the thick layer of rice powder with two daubs of rouge on her cheeks, the false lashes, her eyebrows and lids smoky with kohl, her lips augmented by a chocolate glaze. But the adornments and cosmetics could not hide her character: the haughty nose, heavy eyebrows, intense lips. I thought: A tender young fighting bull.<br /> At eleven I tended to my routine procedures in the bathroom, where the poor girl's clothes were folded on a chair with a rich girl's refinement: an etamine dress with a butterfly print, cheap yellow panties, and fiber sandals. On top of the clothing were an inexpensive bracelet and a very fine chain with a medal of the Virgin. On the edge of the sink, a handbag with a lipstick, a compact of rouge, a key, and some loose coins. Everything so cheap and shabby with use that I couldn't imagine anyone as poor as she was.<br /> I undressed and did my best to arrange my clothes on the hanger so as not to muss the silk shirt and pressed linen. I urinated in the chain-flush toilet, sitting down as Florina de Dios had taught me to do from the time I was a boy so I would not wet the rim of the bowl, and still, modesty aside, with the immediate, steady stream of an untamed colt. Before I went out I peered into the mirror over the sink. The horse that looked back at me from the other side was not dead but funereal, and he had a Pope's dewlaps, puffy eyelids, and thin, lank hair that had once been my musician's mane.<br /> "Shit," I said to him, "what can I do if you don't love me?"<br /> Trying not to wake her, I sat on the bed, naked, my eyes accustomed by now to the deceptions of the red light, and I scrutinized her inch by inch. I ran the tip of my index finger along the damp nape of her neck, and she shivered inside, along the length of her body, like a chord on the harp, turned toward me with a grumble, and enveloped me in the ambience of her acid breath. I pinched her nose with my thumb and index finger, and she shook herself, moved her head away, and turned her back to me without waking. I succumbed to an unforeseen temptation and tried to separate her legs with my knee. On the first two attempts, she resisted with tensed thighs. I sang into her ear: _Angels surround the bed of Delgadina__. She relaxed a little. A warm current traveled up my veins, and my slow, retired animal woke from its long sleep.<br /> Delgadina, my heart, I pleaded, filled with longing. Delgadina. She gave a sorrowful moan, escaped my thighs, turned her back, and curled up like a snail in its shell. The valerian potion must have been as effective for me as for her, because nothing happened, not to her, not to anybody. But I didn't care. I asked myself what good it would do to wake her when I was feeling humiliated and sad and as cold as a striped mullet.<br /> Then the bells, clear and ineluctable, struck midnight, and the morning of August 29, the day of the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, began. Someone in the street wept at the top of his lungs and no one paid attention. I prayed for him, in case he needed that, and for me as well, giving thanks for benefits received: _Let no one be deceived, no, thinking that what he awaits will last longer than what he has seen__. The girl moaned in her sleep and I also prayed for her: _For everything will pass in its turn__. Then I turned off the radio and the light and went to sleep.<br /> I woke in the small hours, not remembering where I was. The girl still slept in a fetal position, her back to me. I had a vague feeling that I had sensed her getting up in the dark and had heard water running in the bathroom, but it might have been a dream. This was something new for me. I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were. That night I discovered the improbable pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty.<br /> I got up at five, uneasy because my Sunday column was supposed to be on the editor's desk before noon. I moved my punctual bowels, still with the burning of the full moon, and when I pulled the chain I felt that my past rancors had gone down to the sewer. When I returned to the bedroom, refreshed and dressed, the girl was asleep on her back in the conciliatory light of dawn, lying sideways across the bed with her arms opened in a cross, absolute mistress of her virginity. God bless you, I said to her. All the money I still had, both hers and mine, I put on the pillow, and I said goodbye forever with a kiss on her forehead. The house, like all brothels at dawn, was the closest thing to paradise. I left by the orchard gate so I wouldn't meet anyone. Under the burning sun on the street I began to feel the weight of my ninety years, and to count minute by minute the minutes of the nights I had left before I died.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />2<br /><br /><br />I AM WRITING these memories in the little that remains of the library that belonged to my parents, and whose shelves are about to collapse as a result of the patience of bookworms. When all is said and done, for what I still have left to do in this world, I'd be satisfied with my many kinds of dictionaries, the first two series of the _Episodios nacionales__ by Don Benito Pérez Galdós, and _The Magic Mountain,__which taught me to understand my mother's moods, distorted by consumption.<br /> Unlike the rest of the furniture, and unlike me, the large table on which I am writing seems to grow healthier with the passage of time, because my paternal grandfather, a ship's carpenter, fashioned it from noble woods. Even when I don't have to write, I arrange it every morning with the pointless rigor that has made me lose so many lovers. Within reach I have the books that are my accomplices: the two volumes of the _Primer diccionario ilustrado__ of the Royal Academy, dated 1903; the _Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española__ of Don Sebastián de Covarrubias; Don Andrés Bello's grammar, essential in the event I have a semantic question; the innovative _Diccionario ideológico__ by Don Julio Casares, in particular for its antonyms and synonyms; the _Vocabolario della lingua italiana__, by Nicola Zingarelli, to help me with my mother's language, which I learned in the cradle; and a Latin dictionary: since it is the mother of the other two, I consider it my native tongue.<br /> On the left side of the writing table I always keep five sheets of office-size rag paper for my Sunday column, and the horn with sand to dry the ink, which I prefer to the modern pad of blotting paper. On the right are the inkwell and holder of light balsa wood with its gold pen, for I still write in the romantic hand that Florina de Dios taught me so I would not adopt the functionary's handwriting of her husband, who was a public notary and certified accountant until he drew his final breath. Some time ago the newspaper ordered everyone to type in order to improve estimates of the text in the linotype's lead and achieve greater accuracy in typesetting, but I never adopted that bad habit. I continued to write by hand and to transcribe on the typewriter with a hen's arduous pecking, thanks to the unwanted privilege of being the oldest employee. Today, retired but not defeated, I enjoy the sacred privilege of writing at home, with the phone off the hook so that no one can disturb me, and without a censor looking over my shoulder to see what I am writing.<br /> I live without dogs or birds or servants, except for the faithful Damiana who has rescued me from the most unexpected difficulties, and who still comes once a week to take care of whatever there is to do, even in the state she is in, losing her sight and her acumen. My mother on her deathbed asked me to marry a fair-skinned woman while I was young and have at least three children, one of them a girl with her name, which had also been her mother's and grandmother's. I intended to comply with her request, but my notion of youth was so flexible I never thought it was too late. Until one hot afternoon when I opened the wrong door in the house of the Palomar de Castro family in Pradomar and saw Ximena Ortiz, the youngest of the daughters, naked as she took her siesta in the adjoining bedroom. She was lying with her back to the door, and she turned to look at me over her shoulder with a gesture so rapid it didn't give me time to escape. Oh, excuse me, I managed to say, my heart in my mouth. She smiled, turned toward me with the grace of a gazelle, and showed me her entire body. The whole room felt saturated with her intimacy. Her nakedness was not absolute, for like Manet's _Olympia__, behind her ear she had a poisonous flower with orange petals, and she also wore a gold bangle on her right wrist and a necklace of tiny pearls. I imagined I would never see anything more exciting for as long as I lived, and today I can confirm that I was right.<br /> I slammed the door shut, embarrassed by my blundering and determined to forget her. But Ximena Ortiz prevented that. She sent me messages with mutual friends, provocative notes, brutal threats, while she spread the rumor that we were mad with love for each other though we hadn't exchanged a word. She was impossible to resist. She had the eyes of a wildcat, a body as provocative with clothes as without, and luxuriant hair of uproarious gold whose woman's smell made me weep with rage into my pillow. I knew it would never turn into love, but the satanic attraction she held for me was so fiery that I attempted to find relief with every green-eyed tart I came across. I never could put out the flame of her memory in the bed at Pradomar, and so I surrendered my weapons to her with a formal request for her hand, an exchange of rings, and the announcement of a large wedding before Pentecost.<br /> The news exploded with greater impact in the Barrio Chino than in the social clubs. At first it was met with derision, but this changed into absolute vexation on the part of those erudite women who viewed marriage as a condition more ridiculous than sacred. My engagement satisfied all the rituals of Christian morality on the terrace, with its Amazonian orchids and hanging ferns, of my fiancée's house. I would arrive at seven in the evening dressed all in white linen, with a gift of handcrafted beads or Swiss chocolates, and we would talk, half in code and half in seriousness, until ten, watched over by Aunt Argénida, who fell asleep in the blink of an eye, like the chaperones in the novels of the day.<br /> Ximena became more voracious the better we got to know each other, she would loosen her bodices and petticoats as the sultry heat of June increased, and it was easy to imagine the devastating power she would have in the dark. After two months of being engaged we had nothing left to talk about, and without saying anything she brought up the subject of children by crocheting little boots for newborns from raw wool. I, the agreeable fiancé, learned to crochet with her, and in this way we passed the useless hours until the wedding: I crocheted little blue booties for boys and she crotcheted pink ones for girls, we'd see who guessed right, until there were enough for more than fifty babies. Before the clock struck ten, I would climb into a horse-drawn carriage and go to the Barrio Chino to live my night in the peace of God.<br /> The tempestuous farewells to bachelorhood that they gave me in the Barrio Chino were the opposite of the oppressive evenings at the Social Club. A contrast that helped me find out which of the two worlds in reality was mine, and I hoped that both were, each at its proper time, because from either one I would watch the other moving away with the heartrending sighs of two ships passing at sea. On the night before the wedding, the dance at El Poder de Dios included a final ceremony that could have occurred only to a Galician priest foundering in concupiscence, who dressed the entire female staff in veils and orange blossoms so that all of them would marry me in a universal sacrament. It was a night of great sacrileges in which twenty-two women promised love and obedience and I reciprocated with fidelity and support for as long as we lived.<br /> I could not sleep because of a presentiment of something irremediable. In the middle of the night I began to count the passage of the hours on the cathedral clock, until the seven dreadful bells when I was supposed to be at the church. The telephone began to ring at eight, long, tenacious, unpredictable rings for more than an hour. Not only did I not answer: I did not breathe. A little before ten someone knocked at the door, first a fist pounding and then the shouting of voices I knew and despised. I was afraid they would push down the door in some serious mishap, but by eleven the house was left in the bristling silence that follows great catastrophes. Then I wept for her and for me, and I prayed with all my heart never to see her again in all my days. Some saint half-heard me, because Ximena Ortiz left the country that same night and did not return until twenty years later, married and with seven children who could have been mine.<br /> It was difficult for me to keep my position and my column at _El Diario de La Paz__ after that social affront. It wasn't because of this, however, that they relegated my columns to page eleven, but because of the blind impetus with which the twentieth century came on the scene. Progress became the myth of the city. Everything changed; planes flew, and a businessman tossed a sack of letters out of a Junker and invented airmail.<br /> The only things that remained the same were my columns in the newspaper. Younger generations launched an attack against them as if they were assaulting a mummy from the past that had to be destroyed, but I maintained the same tone and made no concessions to the winds of renovation. I remained deaf to everything. I had turned forty, but the young staff writers named it the Column of Mudarra the Bastard. The editor at the time called me into his office to ask me to conform to the latest currents. In a solemn way, as if he had just thought of it, he said: The world is moving ahead. Yes, I said, it's moving ahead, but it's revolving around the sun. He kept my Sunday column because he could not have found another cable editor. Today I know I was right, and I know why. The adolescents of my generation, greedy for life, forgot in body and soul about their hopes for the future until reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia. My Sunday columns were there, like an archeological relic among the ruins of the past, and they realized they were not only for the old but also for the young who were not afraid of aging. Then the column returned to the editorial section and, on special occasions, to the front page.<br /> Whenever someone asks I always answer with the truth: whores left me no time to be married. Still, I should acknowledge that I did not come up with this explanation until the day of my ninetieth birthday, when I left Rosa Cabarcas's house determined never again to provoke fate. I felt like a different man. My mood was upset by the disreputable mob I saw leaning against the metal railings around the park. I found Damiana washing the floor, on all fours in the living room, and the youthfulness of her thighs at her age revived in me a tremor from another time. She must have sensed it because she covered herself with her skirt. I could not resist the temptation to ask: Tell me something, Damiana: what do you recall? I wasn't recalling anything, she said, but your question makes me remember. I felt a weight in my chest. I've never fallen in love, I told her. She replied without hesitation: I have. And she concluded, not interrupting her work: I cried over you for twenty-two years. My heart skipped a beat. Looking for a dignified way out, I said: We would have made a good team. Well, it's wrong of you to say so now, she said, because you're no good to me anymore even as a consolation. As she was leaving the house, she said in the most natural way: You won't believe me but thanks be to God, I'm still a virgin.<br /> A short while later I discovered that she had left vases filled with red roses all over the house, and a card on my pillow: _I hope you reach a hunnert__. With this bad taste in my mouth I sat down to continue the column I had left half-finished the day before. I completed it without stopping in less than two hours and had to "twist the neck of the swan," as the Mexican poet said, to write from my heart and not have anyone notice my tears. In a belated moment of inspiration, I decided to finish it with the announcement that with this column I was bringing to a happy conclusion a long and worthy life without the sad necessity of having to die.<br /> My intention was to leave it with reception at the paper and return home. But I couldn't. The entire staff was waiting for me in order to celebrate my birthday. The building was being renovated, and scaffolding and rubble were everywhere, but they had stopped work for the party. On a carpenter's table were drinks for the toast and birthday presents wrapped in gift paper. Dazed by flashing cameras, I was included in every photograph taken as a memento.<br /> I was glad to see radio newscasters and reporters from other papers in the city: _La Prensa__, the conservative morning paper, _El Heraldo__, the liberal morning paper, and _El Nacional__, the evening sensationalist tabloid that always tried to relieve tensions in the public order with serialized stories of passion. It wasn't strange that they were together, for in the spirit of the city it was always considered good form to maintain friendships among the troops while the officers waged editorial war.<br /> Also present, though not at his regular hours, was the official censor, Don Jerónimo Ortega, whom we called the Abominable No-Man because he would arrive with his reactionary satrap's blood-red pencil at nine sharp every night and stay until he was certain no letter in the morning edition went unpunished. He had a personal aversion to me, either because of my grammarian's airs or because I would use Italian words without quotation marks or italics when they seemed more expressive than Spanish, which ought to be legitimate practice between Siamese languages. After enduring him for four years, we had come to accept him in the end as our own bad conscience.<br /> The secretaries brought in a cake with ninety lit candles that confronted me for the first time with the number of my years. I had to swallow tears when they sang the birthday song, and for no reason I thought about the girl. It wasn't a flash of rancor but of belated compassion for a creature I had not expected to think about again. When the moment passed someone had placed a knife in my hand so that I could cut the cake. For fear of being laughed at, no one risked improvising a speech. I would rather have died than respond to one. To conclude the party, the editor in chief, whom I had never liked very much, returned us to harsh reality. And now, illustrious nonagenarian, he said to me: Where's your column?<br /> The truth is that all afternoon I had felt it burning in my pocket like a live coal, but emotion had pierced me in so profound a way I did not have the heart to spoil the party with my resignation. I said: On this occasion there is none. The editor in chief was annoyed at a lapse that had been inconceivable since the previous century. Understand just this once, I said, I had so difficult a night I woke up in a stupor. Well, you should have written about that, he said with his vinegary humor. Readers would like to know firsthand what life is like at ninety. One of the secretaries intervened. It must be a delicious secret, she said and gave me a mischievous look: Isn't it? A burning flash flamed across my face. Damn it, I thought, blushing is so disloyal. Another radiant secretary pointed at me with her finger. How wonderful! You still have the elegance to blush. Her impertinence provoked another blush on top of the first. It must have been a phenomenal night, said the first secretary: How I envy you! And she gave me a kiss that left its painted mark on my face. The photographers were merciless. Bewildered, I gave the column to the editor in chief and told him that what I had said before was a joke, here it is, and I escaped, confused by the last round of applause, in order not to be present when they discovered it was my letter of resignation after half a century of galleys.<br /> I was still apprehensive that night when I unwrapped the presents at home. The linotypists had miscalculated with an electric coffeepot just like the three I had from previous birthdays. The typographers gave me an authorization to pick up an angora cat at the municipal animal shelter. Management bestowed on me a symbolic bonus. The secretaries presented me with three pairs of silk undershorts printed with kisses, and a card in which they offered to remove them for me. It occurred to me that among the charms of old age are the provocations our young female friends permit themselves because they think we are out of commission.<br /> I never found out how I got a record of Chopin's twenty-four Preludes played by Stefan Askenase. Most of the writers gave me best-selling books. I hadn't finished unwrapping the gifts when Rosa Cabarcas called with the question I did not want to hear: What happened to you with the girl? Nothing, I said without thinking. You think it's nothing when you didn't even wake her up? said Rosa Cabarcas. A woman never forgives a man who treats her debut with contempt. I contended that the girl could not be so exhausted just from attaching buttons, and perhaps she pretended to be asleep out of fear of the perilous moment. The one thing that's serious, said Rosa, is that she really believes you can't anymore, and I wouldn't like her to advertise it.<br /> I didn't give her the satisfaction of showing surprise. Even if that happened, I said, her condition is so deplorable she can't be counted on either asleep or awake: she's a candidate for the hospital. Rosa Cabarcas lowered her voice: The problem was how fast the deal was made, but that can be fixed, you'll see. She promised to bring the girl to confession, and if appropriate oblige her to return the money, what do you think? Leave it alone, I said, nothing happened, in fact it showed me I'm in no condition for this kind of chasing around. In that sense the girl's right: I can't anymore. I hung up the phone, filled with a sense of liberation I hadn't known before in my life, and free at last of a servitude that had kept me enslaved since the age of thirteen.<br /> At seven that evening I was guest of honor at the concert in Bellas Artes by Jacques Thibault and Alfred Cortot, whose interpretation of the Sonata for Violin and Piano by César Franck was glorious, and during the intermission I listened to improbable praise. Maestro Pedro Biava, our gigantic musician, almost dragged me to the dressing rooms to introduce me to the soloists. I was so dazzled I congratulated them for a sonata by Schumann they hadn't played, and someone corrected me in public in an unpleasant fashion. The impression that I had confused the two sonatas out of simple ignorance was sown on the local musical scene and made worse by the muddled explanation with which I tried to correct it the following Sunday in my review of the concert.<br /> For the first time in my long life I felt capable of killing someone. I returned home tormented by the little demon who whispers into our ear the devastating replies we didn't give at the right time, and neither reading nor music could mitigate my rage. It was fortunate that Rosa Cabarcas pulled me out of my madness by shouting into the telephone: I'm happy with the paper because I thought you were turning a hundred, not ninety. I answered in a fury: Did I look that fucked up to you? Not at all, she said, what surprised me was to see you looking so good. I'm glad you're not one of those dirty old men who say they're older so people will think they're in good shape. And with no transition she changed the subject: I have your present for you. I was, in fact, surprised: What is it? The girl, she said.<br /> I didn't need even an instant to think about it. Thanks, I said, but that's water under the bridge. She continued without pausing: I'll send her to your house wrapped in India paper and simmered with sandalwood in the double boiler, all free of charge. I remained firm, and she argued with a stony explanation that seemed sincere. She said the girl had been in such bad condition on Friday because she had sewn two hundred buttons with needle and thimble. And it was true she was afraid of bloody violations but had already been instructed regarding the sacrifice. And during her night with me she had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and I was in such a deep sleep she thought it would be a shame to wake me, but I had already left when she woke again in the morning. I became indignant at what seemed a useless lie. Well, Rosa Cabarcas went on, even if that's so, the girl is sorry. Poor thing, she's right here in front of me. Do you want to talk to her? No, for God's sake, I said.<br /> I had begun writing when the secretary from the paper called. The message was that the editor wanted to see me the next day at eleven in the morning. I was punctual. The din of the renovation work did not seem bearable, the air was rarefied by the sound of hammers, the cement dust, and the steam from tar, but in the editorial room they had learned to think in that routine chaos. On the other hand, the editor's offices, icy and silent, remained in an ideal country that was not ours.<br /> The third Marco Tulio, with his adolescent air, got to his feet when he saw me come in but did not interrupt his phone conversation, shook my hand across the desk, and indicated that I should sit down. It occurred to me that there was no one on the other end of the line, that he was playing this farce to impress me, but I soon discovered he was talking to the governor and that it was in reality a difficult conversation between cordial enemies. I believe, too, that he took great pains to appear energetic in my presence, though at the same time he remained standing as he spoke to the official.<br /> He had the notable vice of a smart appearance. He had just turned twenty-nine and knew four languages and had three international master's degrees, unlike the first president-for-life, his paternal grandfather, who became an empirical journalist after making a fortune as a white slaver. He had easy manners, unusual good looks and poise, and the only thing that endangered his distinction was a false note in his voice. He was wearing a sports jacket with a live orchid in the lapel, and each article of clothing suited him as if it were part of his natural being, yet nothing was made for the climate of the street but only for the springtime of his offices. I, who had taken almost two hours to dress, felt the ignominy of poverty, and my rage increased.<br /> Still, the mortal poison lay in a panoramic photograph of the staff taken on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the paper, on which a little cross had been marked above the heads of those who had died. I was third from the right, wearing a straw boater, a large-knotted tie with a pearl tiepin, my first civilian colonel's mustache, which I had until I was forty, and the metal-rimmed glasses of a farsighted seminarian that I hadn't needed after half a century. For years I had seen that photograph hanging in different offices, but it was only then that I became aware of its message: of the forty-eight original employees, only four were still alive, and the youngest of us was serving a twenty-year sentence for multiple homicide.<br /> The editor finished the phone call, caught me looking at the photograph, and smiled. I didn't put in those little crosses, he said. I think they're in very bad taste. He sat down behind his desk and changed his tone: Permit me to say that you are the most unpredictable man I have ever known. And seeing my surprise, he anticipated my response: I say this because of your resignation. I managed to say: It's an entire life. He replied that just for that reason it was not an appropriate solution. He thought the column was magnificent, everything it said about old age was the best he had ever read, and it made no sense to end it with a decision that seemed more like a civil death. It was fortunate, he said, that the editorial page was already put together when the Abominable No-Man read the article and thought it was inadmissible. Without consulting anyone he crossed it out from top to bottom with his Torquemada's pencil. When I found out this morning I had a note of protest sent to the government. It was my duty, but between us, I can say I'm very grateful for the censor's arbitrariness. Which means I was not prepared to accept the termination of the column. I beg you with all my heart, he said. Don't abandon ship in mid ocean. And he concluded in grand style: There is still a great deal left for us to say about music.<br /> He seemed so resolute I did not have the heart to make our disagreement worse with a counter-argument. In fact, the problem was that even on this occasion I could not find a decent reason for abandoning the treadmill, and the idea of once again telling him yes just to gain time terrified me. I had to control myself so he wouldn't notice the shameless emotion bringing tears to my eyes. And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.<br /> The following week, prey to a state closer to confusion than joy, I passed by the animal shelter to pick up the cat the printers had given me. I have very bad chemistry with animals, just as I do with children before they begin to speak. They seem mute in their souls. I don't hate them, but I can't tolerate them, because I never learned to deal with them. I think it is against nature for a man to get along better with his dog than he does with his wife, to teach it to eat and defecate on schedule, to answer his questions and share his sorrows. But not picking up the typographers' cat would have been an insult. Besides, it was a beautiful specimen of an angora, with a rosy, shining coat, bright eyes, and meows that seemed on the verge of being words. They gave him to me in a wicker basket, with a certificate of ancestry and an owner's manual like the one for assembling bicycles.<br /> A military patrol was verifying the identity of pedestrians before allowing them to walk through San Nicolás Park. I had never seen anything like it and could not imagine anything more disheartening as a symptom of my old age. It was a four-man patrol, under the command of an officer who was almost an adolescent. The soldiers were from the highland barrens, hard, silent men who smelled of the stable. The officer kept an eye on all of them with their bright-red cheeks of Andeans at the beach. After looking over my identification papers and press card, he asked what I was carrying in the basket. A cat, I told him. He wanted to see it. I uncovered the basket with as much caution as I could for fear it would escape, but a soldier wanted to see if there was anything else on the bottom, and the cat scratched him. The officer intervened. He's a gem of an angora, he said. He stroked it and murmured something, and the cat didn't attack him but didn't pay any attention to him either. How old is he? he asked. I don't know, I said, it was just given to me. I'm asking because you can see he's very old, perhaps as old as ten. I wanted to ask how he knew, and many other things as well, but in spite of his good manners and flowery speech I didn't have the stomach to talk to him. I think he's an abandoned cat who's gone through a good deal, he said. Observe him, don't try to make him adapt to you, you adapt to him instead, and leave him alone until you gain his confidence. He closed the lid of the basket and asked: What kind of work do you do? I'm a journalist. How long have you done that? For a century, I told him. I don't doubt it, he said. He shook my hand and said goodbye with a sentence that might have been either good advice or a threat: "Take good care of yourself."<br /> At noon I disconnected the phone in order to take refuge in an exquisite program of music: Wagner's Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra, Debussy's Rhapsody for Saxophone, and Bruckner's String Quintet, which is an edenic oasis in the cataclysm of his work. And all at once I found myself enveloped in the darkness of the study. Under the table I felt something slip by that did not seem like a living body but a supernatural presence brushing past my feet, and I jumped up with a shout. It was the cat with its beautiful plumed tail, mysterious languor, and mythic ancestry, and I could not help shuddering at being alone in the house with a living being that was not human.<br /> When the cathedral bells struck seven, there was a single, limpid star in the rose-colored sky, a ship called out a disconsolate farewell, and in my throat I felt the Gordian knot of all the loves that might have been and weren't. I could not bear any more. I picked up the phone with my heart in my mouth, dialed the four numbers with slow deliberation in order not to make a mistake, and after the third ring I recognized her voice. All right, woman, I said with a sigh of relief: Forgive my outburst this morning. She was serene: Don't worry about it, I was expecting your call. I told her: I want the girl to wait for me just as God sent her into the world, and with no paint on her face. She laughed her guttural laugh. Whatever you say, she said, but you lose the pleasure of undressing her one piece of clothing at a time, something old men love to do, I don't know why. I do, I said: Because they keep growing older and older. She considered it settled.<br /> "All right," she said, "then tonight at ten sharp, before she has a chance to cool down."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />3<br /><br /><br />WHAT COULD HER NAME BE? The owner hadn't told me. When she talked about her to me she said only: the girl, la niña. And I had turned that into a given name, like girl of my dreams, or the smallest of the caravels. Besides, Rosa Cabarcas gave her employees a different name for each client. It amused me to guess their names from their faces, and from the beginning I was sure the girl had a long one, like Filomena, Saturnina, or Nicolasa. I was thinking about this when she gave a half-turn in bed and lay with her back to me, and it looked as if she had left a pool of blood the size and shape of her body. My shock was instantaneous until I confirmed that it was the dampness of her perspiration on the sheet.<br /> Rosa Cabarcas had advised me to treat her with caution, since she still felt her terror of the first time. What is more, I believe the solemnity of the ritual heightened her fear and the dose of valerian had to be increased, for she slept with so much placidity that it would have been a shame to wake her without a lullaby. And so I began to dry her with a towel while I sang in a whisper the song about Delgadina, the king's youngest daughter, wooed by her father. As I dried her she was showing me her sweaty flanks to the rhythm of my song: _Delgadina, Delgadina, you will be my darling love__. It was a limitless pleasure, for she began to perspire again on one side as I finished drying the other, which meant the song might never end. _Arise, arise, Delgadina, and put on your skirt of silk__, I sang into her ear. At the end, when the king's servants find her dead of thirst in her bed, it seemed to me that my girl had been about to wake when she heard the name. Then that's who she was: Delgadina.<br /> I returned to bed wearing my shorts printed with kisses and lay down beside her. I slept until five to the lullaby of her peaceful respiration. I dressed in haste, without washing, and only then did I see the sentence written in lipstick across the mirror over the sink: _The tiger does not eat far away__. I knew it hadn't been there the night before, and no one could have come into the room, and therefore I understood it as a gift from the devil. A terrifying clap of thunder surprised me at the door, and the room filled with the premonitory smell of wet earth. I did not have time to escape untouched. Before I could find a taxi there was a huge downpour, the kind that throws the city into chaos between May and October, for the streets of burning sand that go down to the river turn into gullies formed by the torrents that carry away everything in their path. During that strange September, after three months of drought, the rains could have been as providential as they were devastating.<br /> From the moment I opened the door to my house I was met by the physical sensation that I was not alone. I caught a glimpse of the cat as he jumped off the sofa and raced out to the balcony. In his dish were the remains of a meal I hadn't given him. The stink of his rancid urine and warm shit contaminated everything. I had devoted myself to studying him in the way I studied Latin. The manual said that cats scratch at the ground to hide their droppings, and in houses without a courtyard, like this one, they would scratch in flower pots or some other hiding place. From the very first day it was advisable to provide them with a box of sand to redirect this habit, which I had done. It also said that the first thing they do in a new house is mark out their territory by urinating everywhere, which might be true, but the manual did not say how to prevent it. I followed his tracks to familiarize myself with his original habits, but I could not find his secret hiding places, his resting places, the causes of his erratic moods. I tried to teach him to eat on schedule, to use the litter box on the terrace, not to climb into my bed while I was sleeping or sniff at food on the table, and I could not make him understand that the house was his by his own right and not as the spoils of war. So I let him do whatever he wanted.<br /> At dusk I faced the rainstorm, whose hurricane-force winds threatened to blow down the house. I suffered an attack of sneezing, my skull hurt, and I had a fever, but I felt possessed by a strength and determination I'd never had at any age or for any reason. I put pots on the floor under the leaks and realized that new ones had appeared since the previous winter. The largest had begun to flood the right side of the library. I hurried to rescue the Greek and Latin authors who lived there, but when I removed the books I discovered a stream spurting at high pressure from a broken pipe along the bottom of the wall. I did what I could to pack it with rags to give me time to save the books. The deafening noise of the rain and the howling of the wind intensified in the park. Then a phantasmal flash of lightning and a simultaneous clap of thunder saturated the air with a strong sulfur odor, the wind destroyed the balcony's window panes, and the awful sea squall broke the locks and came inside the house. And yet, in less than ten minutes, the sky cleared all at once. A splendid sun dried the streets filled with stranded trash, and the heat returned.<br /> When the storm had passed I still had the feeling I was not alone in the house. My only explanation is that just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they had happened. For if I evoked the emergency of the rainstorm, I did not see myself alone in the house but always accompanied by Delgadina. I had felt her so close during the night that I detected the sound of her breath in the bedroom and the throbbing of her cheek on my pillow. It was the only way I could understand how we could have done so much in so short a time. I remembered standing on the library footstool and I remembered her awake in her little flowered dress taking the books from me to put them in a safe place. I saw her running from one end of the house to the other battling the storm, drenched with rain and in water up to her ankles. I remembered how the next day she prepared a breakfast that never was and set the table while I dried the floors and imposed order on the shipwreck of the house. I never forgot her somber look as we were eating: Why were you so old when we met? I answered with the truth: Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.<br /> From then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted with her. I changed the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color of light when she was annoyed. I dressed her according to the age and condition that suited my changes of mood: a novice in love at twenty, a parlor whore at forty, the queen of Babylon at seventy, a saint at one hundred. We sang Puccini love duets, Agustín Lara boleros, Carlos Gardel tangos, and we confirmed once again that those who do not sing cannot even imagine the joy of singing. Today I know it was not a hallucination but one more miracle of the first love of my life at the age of ninety.<br /> When the house was in order I called Rosa Cabarcas. Holy God! she exclaimed when she heard my voice, I thought you had drowned. She could not understand how I had spent another night with the girl and not touched her. You have the absolute right not to like her, but at least behave like an adult. I tried to explain, but with no transition she changed the subject: In any case, I have another one in mind for you who's a little older, beautiful, and also a virgin. Her father wants to trade her for a house, but we can discuss a discount. My heart froze. That's the last straw, I protested in horror, I want the same one, the way she always is, without failures, without fights, without bad memories. There was a silence on the line, and then the docile voice in which she said, as if talking to herself: Well, this must be what the doctors call senile dementia.<br /> At ten that night I went there with a driver known for the unusual virtue of not asking questions. I took along a portable fan, a painting by Orlando Rivera--the beloved Figurita_--__and a hammer and nail to hang it on the wall. I stopped on the way to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, scented soap, Florida Water, and licorice lozenges. I also wanted to bring a nice vase and a bouquet of yellow roses to exorcise the inanity of paper flowers, but nothing was open and I had to steal a bouquet of newborn alstroemerias from a private garden.<br /> On the instructions of the owner, from then on I arrived by the back street that ran along the aqueduct so no one would see me enter by the orchard gate. The driver warned me: Be careful, scholar, they kill in that house. I replied: If it's for love it doesn't matter. The courtyard was in darkness, but there were lights burning in the windows and a confusion of music playing in the six bedrooms. In mine, at top volume, I heard the warm voice of Don Pedro Vargas, the tenor of America, singing a bolero by Miguel Matamoros. I felt as if I were going to die. I pushed open the door, gasping for breath, and saw Delgadina in bed as she was in my memory: naked and sleeping in holy peace on the side of her heart.<br /> Before I lay down I arranged the dressing table, replaced the rusty fan with the new one, and hung the picture where she could see it from the bed. I lay down beside her and examined her inch by inch. It was the same girl who had walked through my house: the same hands that recognized me by touch in the darkness, the same feet with their delicate step that became confused with the cat's, the same odor of sweat on my sheets, the same finger that wore the thimble. Incredible: seeing and touching her in the flesh, she seemed less real to me than in my memory.<br /> There's a painting on the opposite wall, I told her. Figurita painted it, a man we loved very much, the best brothel dancer who ever lived, and so good-hearted he felt sorry for the devil. He painted it with ship's varnish on scorched canvas from a plane that crashed in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, with brushes that he made with hair from his dog. The woman he painted is a nun he abducted from a convent and married. I'll leave it here so it will be the first thing you see when you wake up.<br /> She hadn't changed position when I turned off the light, at one in the morning, and her respiration was so faint I took her pulse so I could feel she was alive. Blood circulated through her veins with the fluidity of a song that branched off into the most hidden areas of her body and returned to her heart, purified by love.<br /> Before I left at dawn I drew the lines of her hand on a piece of paper and gave it to Diva Sahibí for a reading so I could know her soul. She said: A person who says only what she thinks. Perfect for manual labor. She's in contact with someone who has died and from whom she expects help, but she's mistaken: the help she's looking for is within reach of her hand. She's had no relationships, but she'll die an old woman, and married. Now she has a dark man, but he won't be the man of her life. She could have eight children but will decide for just three. At the age of thirty-five, if she does what her heart tells her and not her mind, she'll manage a lot of money, and at forty she'll receive an inheritance. She's going to travel a good deal. She has double life and double luck and can influence her own destiny. She likes to try everything, out of curiosity, but she'll be sorry if she isn't guided by her heart.<br /> Tormented by love, I had the storm damage fixed and also took care of many other repairs I had put off for years because of insolvency or indolence. I reorganized the library according to the order in which I had read the books. And I discarded the player piano as a historical relic, along with more than a hundred rolls of classical music, and bought a used record player that was better than mine, with high-fidelity speakers that enlarged the area of the house. I was on the verge of ruin but well-compensated by the miracle of still being alive at my age.<br /> The house rose from its ashes and I sailed on my love of Delgadina with an intensity and happiness I had never known in my former life. Thanks to her I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.<br /> I became another man. I tried to reread the classics that had guided me in adolescence, and I could not bear them. I buried myself in the romantic writings I had repudiated when my mother tried to impose them on me with a heavy hand, and in them I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love. When my tastes in music reached a crisis, I discovered that I was backward and old, and I opened my heart to the delights of chance.<br /> I ask myself how I could give in to this perpetual vertigo that I in fact provoked and feared. I floated among erratic clouds and talked to myself in front of the mirror in the vain hope of confirming who I was. My delirium was so great that during a student demonstration complete with rocks and bottles, I had to make an enormous effort not to lead it as I held up a sign that would sanctify my truth: _I am mad with love.__<br /> Disoriented by the merciless evocation of Delgadina asleep, with no malice at all I changed the spirit of my Sunday columns. Whatever the subject, I wrote them for her, laughed and cried over them for her, and my life poured into every word. Rather than the formula of a traditional personal column that they always had followed, I wrote them as love letters that all people could make their own. At the paper I proposed that instead of setting the text in linotype it be published in my Florentine handwriting. The editor in chief, of course, thought it was another attack of senile vanity, but the managing editor persuaded him with a phrase that is still making the rounds: "Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future."<br /> The response of the public was immediate and enthusiastic, with numerous letters from readers in love. Some columns were read on radio newscasts along with the latest crises, and mimeographs or carbon copies were made and sold like contraband cigarettes on the corners of Calle San Blas. From the start it was evident that the columns obeyed my longing to express myself, but I developed the habit of taking that into account when I wrote, always in the voice of a ninety-year-old who had not learned to think like an old man. The intellectual community, as usual, showed itself to be timid and divided, and even the most unexpected graphologists engaged in controversies regarding their inconsistent analyses of my handwriting. It was they who divided opinions, overheated the polemic, and made nostalgia popular.<br /> Before the end of the year I had arranged with Rosa Cabarcas to leave in the room the electric fan, the toilet articles, and whatever else I might bring in the future to make it livable. I would arrive at ten, always with something new for her, or for both of us, and spend a few minutes taking out the hidden props to set up the theater of our nights. Before I left, never later than five, I would secure everything again under lock and key. Then the bedroom returned to its original squalor for the sad loves of casual clients. One morning I heard that Marcos Pérez, the most listened-to voice on radio after daybreak, had decided to read my Sunday columns on his Monday newscasts. When I could control my nausea I said in horror: Now you know, Delgadina, that fame is a very fat lady who doesn't sleep with you, but when you wake she's always at the foot of the bed, looking at us.<br /> One day during this time I stayed to have breakfast with Rosa Cabarcas, who was beginning to seem less decrepit to me in spite of her rigorous mourning and the black bonnet that concealed her eyebrows. Her breakfasts were known to be splendid, and prepared with enough pepper to make me cry. At the first fiery bite I said, bathed in tears: Tonight I won't need a full moon for my asshole to burn. Don't complain, she said. If it burns it's because you still have one, thanks be to God.<br /> She was surprised when I mentioned the name Delgadina. That isn't her name, she said, her name is... Don't tell me, I interrupted, for me she's Delgadina. She shrugged: All right, after all, she's yours, but to me it sounds like a diuretic. I mentioned the message about the tiger that the girl had written on the mirror. It couldn't have been her, Rosa said, she doesn't know how to read or write. Then who was it? She shrugged: It could be from somebody who died in the room.<br /> I took advantage of those breakfasts to unburden myself to Rosa Cabarcas, and I requested small favors for the well-being and good appearance of Delgadina. She granted them without thinking about it, and with the mischievousness of a schoolgirl. How funny! she said at the time. I feel as if you were asking me for her hand. And speaking of that, she said in a casual way, why don't you marry her? I was dumbfounded. I'm serious, she insisted, it'll be cheaper. After all, at your age the problem is whether you can or can't, but you told me you have that problem solved. I cut her off: Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love.<br /> She burst into laughter. Ah, my scholar, I always knew you were a real man, you always were and I'm glad you still are while your enemies are surrendering their weapons. There's a reason they talk so much about you. Did you hear Marcos Pérez? Everybody hears him, I said, to change the subject. But she insisted: Professor Camacho y Cano, too, on _The Little Bit of Everything Hour__, said yesterday that the world isn't what it once was because there aren't many men like you left.<br /> That weekend I found that Delgadina had a fever and cough. I woke Rosa Cabarcas to ask for a household remedy, and she brought a first-aid kit to the room. Two days later Delgadina was still prostrate and had not been able to return to her routine of attaching buttons. The doctor had prescribed a household treatment for a common grippe that would be over in a week, but he was alarmed by her general malnourished state. I stopped seeing her, felt how much I missed her, and used the opportunity to arrange the room without her in it.<br /> I also brought in a pen-and-ink drawing by Cecilia Porras for _We Were All Waiting__, álvaro Cepeda's book of short stories. I brought the six volumes of Romain Rolland's _Jean Christophe__ to help me through my wakeful nights. And so, when Delgadina was able to return to the room, she found it worthy of a sedentary happiness: the air purified by an aromatic insecticide, rose-colored walls, shaded lamps, fresh flowers in the vases, my favorite books, my mother's good paintings hung in a different way, according to modern tastes. I had replaced the old radio with a shortwave model that I kept tuned to a classical music program so that Delgadina would learn to sleep to Mozart's quartets, but one night I found it tuned to a station that specialized in popular boleros. It was her preference, no doubt, and I accepted this without sorrow, for I had cultivated the same preference in my better days. Before returning home the next day, I wrote on the mirror with her lipstick: _Dear girl, we are alone in the world.__<br /> During this period I had the strange impression that she was growing older before her time. I mentioned this to Rosa Cabarcas, who thought it was natural. She turns fifteen on December 5, she said. A perfect Sagittarius. It troubled me that she was real enough to have birthdays. What could I give her? A bicycle, said Rosa Cabarcas. She has to cross the city twice a day to sew on buttons. In the back room she showed me the bicycle Delgadina used, and the truth was it seemed a piece of junk unworthy of so well-loved a woman. Still, it moved me as a tangible proof that Delgadina existed in real life.<br /> When I went to buy her the best bicycle, I couldn't resist the temptation of trying it, and I rode it a few casual times along the ramp in the store. When the salesman asked me how old I was, I responded with the coquetry of age: I'm almost ninety-one. He said just what I wanted him to: Well, you look twenty years younger. I didn't understand myself how I had retained that schoolboy's skill, and I felt myself overflowing with a radiant joy. I began to sing. First to myself, in a quiet voice, and then at full volume, with the airs of the great Caruso, in the midst of the public market's garish shops and demented traffic. People looked at me in amusement, called to me, urged me to participate in the Vuelta a Colombia bicycle race in a wheelchair. I responded with the salute of a happy mariner, not interrupting my song. That week, in tribute to December, I wrote another bold column: "How to Be Happy on a Bicycle at the Age of Ninety."<br /> On the night of her birthday I sang the entire song to Delgadina, and I kissed her all over her body until I was breathless: her spine, vertebra by vertebra, down to her languid buttocks, the side with the mole, the side of her inexhaustible heart. As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance. She responded with new vibrations along every inch of her skin, and on each one I found a distinctive heat, a unique taste, a different moan, and her entire body resonated inside with an arpeggio, and her nipples opened and flowered without being touched. I was beginning to fall asleep in the small hours when I heard something like the sound of multitudes in the sea and a panic in the trees that pierced my heart. I went to the bathroom and wrote on the mirror: _Delgadina, my love, the Christmas breezes have arrived.__<br /> One of my happiest memories was a disturbance I felt on a similar morning as I was leaving school. What's wrong with me? The dazed teacher said: Ah, my boy, can't you see it's the breezes? Eighty years later I felt it again when I woke in Delgadina's bed, and it was the same punctual December returning with its translucent skies, its sandstorms, its whirl-winds in the streets that blew the roofs off houses and lifted the skirts of schoolgirls. This was when the city acquired a spectral resonance. On breezy nights, even in the neighborhoods in the hills, shouts from the public market could be heard as if they were just around the corner. It was not unusual for the December gusts to allow us to locate friends, scattered among distant brothels, by the sound of their voices.<br /> The breezes, however, also brought me the bad news that Delgadina could not spend the Christmas holidays with me but would be with her family. If I detest anything in this world it is the obligatory celebrations with people crying because they're happy, artificial fires, inane carols, crepe-paper wreaths that have nothing to do with the child born two thousand years ago in a poor stable. Still, when night came I could not resist my nostalgia and I went to the room without her. I slept well and woke next to a plush bear that walked on its hind legs like a polar bear, and a card that said: _For the ugly papá__. Rosa Cabarcas had told me that Delgadina was learning to read from the lessons I wrote on the mirror, and I thought her nice handwriting admirable. But the owner punctured my illusions with the awful news that the bear was her gift, and therefore on New Year's Eve I stayed home and was in bed by eight, and fell asleep without bitterness. I was happy, because at the stroke of twelve, in the midst of the furious pealing of the bells, the factory and fire-engine sirens, the lamentations of ships, the explosion of fireworks and rockets, I sensed that Delgadina tiptoed in, lay down beside me, and gave me a kiss. So real that her licorice scent remained on my mouth.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />4<br /><br /><br />AT THE BEGINNING of the new year we started to know each other as well as if we lived together awake, for I had discovered a cautious tone of voice that she heard without waking, and she would answer me with the natural language of her body. Her states of mind could be seen in the way she slept. Exhausted and unpolished at first, she was approaching an inner peace that beautified her face and enriched her sleep. I told her about my life, I read into her ear the first drafts of my Sunday columns in which, without my saying so, she and she alone was present.<br /> During this time I left on her pillow a pair of emerald earrings that had belonged to my mother. She wore them to our next rendezvous but they didn't look good on her. Then I brought a pair better suited to her skin color. I explained: The first ones I brought weren't right for your type and your haircut. These will look better. She didn't wear any earrings at all to our next two meetings, but for the third she put on the ones I had suggested. In this way I began to understand that she did not obey my orders but waited for an opportunity to please me. By now I felt so accustomed to this kind of domestic life that I no longer slept naked but wore the Chinese silk pajamas I had stopped using because I hadn't had anyone to take them off for.<br /> I began to read her _The Little Prince__ by Saint-Exupéry, a French author whom the entire world admires more than the French do. It was the first book to entertain her without waking her, and in fact I had to go there two days in a row to finish reading it to her. We continued with Perrault's _Tales, Sacred History__, the _Arabian Nights__ in a version sanitized for children, and because of the differences among them I realized that her sleep had various levels of profundity depending on her interest in the readings. When I sensed she had touched the deepest level I turned out the light and slept with my arms around her until the roosters crowed.<br /> I felt so happy that I would kiss her eyelids with very gentle kisses, and one night it happened like a light in the sky: she smiled for the first time. Later, for no reason at all, she rolled over in bed, turned her back to me, and said in vexation: It was Isabel who made the snails cry. Excited by the hope of a dialogue, I asked in the same tone: Whose were they? She didn't answer. Her voice had a plebeian touch, as if it belonged not to her but to someone else she carried inside. That was when the last shadow of a doubt disappeared from my soul: I preferred her asleep.<br /> My only problem was the cat. He would not eat and was unsociable and spent two days in his habitual corner without raising his head, and he clawed at me like a wounded beast when I tried to put him in the wicker basket so that Damiana could take him to the veterinarian. It was all she could do to control him, and she carried him there, protesting, in a burlap sack. In a while she called from the shelter to say that he had to be put down and they needed my authorization. Why? Because he's very old, said Damiana. I thought in a rage that they could also roast me alive in an oven filled with cats. I felt caught between two fires: I had not learned to love the cat, but neither did I have the heart to order him killed just because he was old. Where did the manual say that?<br /> The incident disturbed me so much that I wrote the Sunday column with a title usurped from Neruda: "Is the Cat a Minuscule Salon Tiger?" The column gave rise to a new campaign that once again divided readers into those who were for and those who were against cats. After five days the prevailing thesis was that it might be legitimate to put down a cat for reasons of public health but not because it was old.<br /> After the death of my mother, I would be kept awake by my terror that someone might touch me while I was sleeping. One night I felt her touch, but her voice restored my serenity: _Figlio mio poveretto__. I felt the same thing late one night in Delgadina's room, and I twisted with delight, believing she had touched me. But no: it was Rosa Cabarcas in the dark. Get dressed and come with me, she said, I have a serious problem.<br /> She did, and it was more serious than I could have imagined. One of the house's important clients had been stabbed to death in the first room in the pavilion. The killer had escaped. The enormous corpse, naked but with shoes on, had the pallor of steamed chicken in the blood-soaked bed. I recognized him as soon as I walked in: it was J. M. B., an important banker, famous for his elegant bearing, his good nature, his fine clothes, and above all for the smartness of his home. On his neck he had two purple wounds like lips, and a gash on his belly was still bleeding. Rigor had not yet set in. More than his wounds, what struck me was that he wore a condom, to all appearances unused, on his sex that was shrunken by death.<br /> Rosa Cabarcas did not know whom he had been with because he too had the privilege of coming in by the orchard entrance. The suspicion was not discounted that his companion might have been another man. The only thing the owner wanted from me was help in dressing the body. She was so steady that I was disturbed by the idea that, for her, death was a mere kitchen matter. There's nothing more difficult than dressing a dead man, I said. I've done it more than once, she replied. It's easy if somebody holds him for me. I pointed out: Who do you imagine is going to believe that a body sliced up by stab wounds is inside the undamaged clothes of an English gentleman?<br /> I trembled for Delgadina. The best thing would be for you to take her with you, said Rosa Cabarcas. I'd rather die first, I said, my saliva icy. She saw this and could not hide her disdain: You're trembling! For her, I said, though it was only half true. Tell her to leave before anybody comes. All right, she said, though as a reporter nothing will happen to you. Or to you either, I said with a certain rancor. You're the only liberal with power in this government.<br /> The city, so sought-after for its peaceful nature and congenital safety, was degraded by the misfortune of a scandalous, brutal murder every year. This one wasn't it. The official news report, with headlines that were too big and details that were too scant, said the young banker had been attacked and stabbed to death for unknown reasons on the Pradomar highway. He had no enemies. The government communiqué indicated that the presumed killers were refugees from the interior of the country who were unleashing a crime wave foreign to the civic spirit of the city's residents. In the first few hours more than fifty arrests were made.<br /> Scandalized, I turned to the legal reporter, a typical newspaperman from the twenties who wore a green eyeshade and elastic bands on his sleeves and took pride in anticipating the facts. He, however, knew only a few stray threads of the crime, and I filled him in as much as prudence would allow. And so with four hands we wrote five pages of copy for an eight-column article on the front page, attributed to the eternal phantom of reliable sources in whom we had complete confidence. But the Abominable No-Man--the censor--did not hesitate to impose the official version that it had been an attack by liberal outlaws. I purified my conscience with a scowl of mourning at the most cynical and well-attended funeral of the century.<br /> When I returned home that night I called Rosa Cabarcas to find out what had happened to Delgadina, but she did not answer the phone for four days. On the fifth I went to her house with clenched teeth. The doors were sealed, not by the police but by the health department. Nobody in the area knew anything about anything. With no sign of Delgadina, I began a furious and at times ridiculous search that left me gasping for breath. I spent entire days observing young female cyclists from the benches in a dusty park where children at play climbed to the top of the peeling statue of Simón Bolívar. They pedaled past like doe: beautiful, available, ready to be caught in a game of blindman's bluff. When I had no more hope I took refuge in the peace of boleros. That was like a lethal potion: every word was Delgadina. I always had needed silence to write because my mind would pay more attention to the music than to my writing. Now it was the reverse: I could write only in the shade of boleros. My life became filled with her. The columns I wrote during those two weeks were models in code for love letters. The managing editor, annoyed by the avalanche of responses, asked me to moderate the love while we thought of a way to console so many lovelorn readers.<br /> The lack of serenity put an end to the precision of my days. I woke at five but stayed in the darkened room imagining Delgadina in her unreal life as she woke her brothers and sisters, dressed them for school, gave them breakfast if there was any food, and bicycled across the city to serve out her sentence of sewing buttons. I asked myself in astonishment: What does a woman think about while she attaches a button? Did she think of me? Was she also looking for Rosa Cabarcas to find out about me? For a week I did not take off my mechanic's coverall day or night, I did not bathe or shave or brush my teeth, because love taught me too late that you groom yourself for someone, you dress and perfume yourself for someone, and I'd never had anyone to do that for. Damiana thought I was sick when she found me naked in the hammock at ten in the morning. I looked at her with eyes clouded by desire and invited her to a naked roll in the hay. She, with some scorn, said: "Have you thought about what you'll do if I say yes?"<br /> In this way I learned how much my suffering had corrupted me. I did not recognize myself in my adolescent's pain. I did not go out, so as not to leave the phone unattended. I wrote without taking it off the hook, and at the first ring I would rush to answer it, thinking it might be Rosa Cabarcas. I kept interrupting whatever I was doing to call her, and I repeated this for days on end until I realized it was a phone without a heart.<br /> When I returned home one rainy afternoon I found the cat curled up on the front steps. He was dirty, battered, and so meek it filled me with compassion. The manual informed me he was sick, and I followed its rules for making him feel better. Then, all at once, while I was having a siesta, I was awakened by the idea that he could lead me to Delgadina's house. I carried him in a shopping bag to Rosa Cabarcas's shop, still sealed and showing no signs of life, but he twisted around so much in the bag that he managed to escape, jumped over the orchard wall, and disappeared among the trees. I banged on the door with my fist, and a military voice asked without opening it: Who goes there? A friend, I said, not to be outdone. I'm looking for the owner. There is no owner, said the voice. At least open up so I can get my cat, I insisted. There is no cat, it said. I asked: Who are you?<br /> "Nobody," said the voice.<br /> I always had understood that dying of love was mere poetic license. That afternoon, back home again without the cat and without her, I proved that it was not only possible but that I myself, an old man without anyone, was dying of love. But I also realized that the contrary was true as well: I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world. I had spent more than fifteen years trying to translate the poems of Leopardi, and only on that afternoon did I have a profound sense of them: _Ah, me, if this is love, then how it torments.__<br /> My going to the paper in a coverall and unshaven awoke certain doubts regarding my mental state. The remodeled offices, with individual glass cubicles and skylights, looked like a maternity hospital. The artificial climate, silent and comfortable, invited speaking in whispers and walking on tiptoe. In the lobby, like dead viceroys, were oil portraits of the three editors-for-life and photographs of illustrious visitors. The enormous main room was presided over by the gigantic photograph of the current editorial staff taken on the afternoon of my birthday. I could not avoid a mental comparison to the one taken when I was thirty, and once again I confirmed with horror that one ages more and with more intensity in pictures than in reality. The secretary who had kissed me on the afternoon of my birthday asked if I was sick. I was happy to respond with the truth so she would not believe it: Sick with love. She said: Too bad it's not for me! I returned the compliment: Don't be so sure.<br /> The legal reporter came out of his cubicle shouting that two bodies of unidentified girls were in the city morgue. Frightened, I asked him: What age? Young, he said. They may be refugees from the interior chased here by the regime's thugs. I sighed with relief. The situation encroaches on us in silence, like a bloodstain, I said. The legal reporter, at some distance now, shouted: "Not blood, Maestro, shit."<br /> Something worse happened to me a few days later, when a fast-moving girl carrying a basket the same as the cat's passed like a shudder in front of the Mundo Bookstore. I followed her, elbowing my way through the crowd in the clamor of noon. She was very beautiful, with long strides and a fluidity in finding her way past people that made it difficult for me to catch up to her. At last I passed her and looked into her face. She moved me aside with her hand, not stopping and not begging my pardon. She was not who I had thought, but her haughtiness wounded me as if she were. I understood then that I would not be able to recognize Delgadina awake and dressed, nor could she know me if she had never seen me. In an act of madness, I crocheted twelve pairs of blue and pink infant's booties in three days, trying to give myself the courage not to hear or sing or think about the songs that reminded me of her.<br /> The truth was that I could not manage my soul, and I was becoming aware of old age because of my weakness in the face of love. I had even more dramatic proof of this when a public bus ran down a girl on a bicycle in the middle of the business district. She had just been taken away in an ambulance, and the magnitude of the tragedy could be seen in the scrap metal that the bicycle, lying in a pool of bright blood, had been reduced to. But I was affected not so much by the ruined bicycle as by the brand, model, and color. It had to be the one I had given Delgadina.<br /> The witnesses agreed that the injured cyclist was very young, tall and slim, with short curly hair. Stunned, I hailed the first taxi I saw and took it to the Hospital de Caridad, an old building with ocher walls that looked like a prison bogged down in quick-sand. It took me half an hour to get in and another half hour to get out of a courtyard fragrant with fruit trees where a woman in distress blocked my way, looked into my eyes, and exclaimed: "I'm the one you're not looking for."<br /> Only then did I remember that this was where non-violent patients from the municipal asylum lived without restraints. I had to identify myself as a reporter to hospital management before a nurse would take me to the emergency ward. The information was in the admissions book: Rosalba Ríos, sixteen, no known employment. Diagnosis: cerebral concussion. Prognosis: guarded. I asked the head of the ward if I could see her, hoping in my heart that he would say no, but I was taken to her, for they were delighted by the idea that I might want to write about the neglected state of the hospital.<br /> We crossed a cluttered ward that had a strong smell of carbolic acid, and patients crowded into the beds. At the rear, in a single room, lying on a metal cot, was the girl we were looking for. Her skull was covered with bandages, her face indecipherable, swollen, and black-and-blue, but all I needed to see were her feet to know she wasn't Delgadina. Only then did it occur to me to wonder: What would I have done if it had been?<br /> Still entangled in the night's cobwebs, the next day I found the courage to go to the shirt factory where Rosa Cabarcas had once told me the girl worked, and I asked the owner to show us his plant as a model for a continent-wide project of the United Nations. He was an elephantine, taciturn Lebanese who opened the doors to his kingdom in the illusory hope of being an example to the world.<br /> Three hundred girls in white blouses with Ash Wednesday crosses on their foreheads were sewing buttons in the vast, illuminated nave. When they saw us come in they sat up straight, like schoolgirls, and watched out of the corners of their eyes as the manager explained his contributions to the immemorial art of attaching buttons. I scrutinized each of their faces, terrified that I would discover Delgadina dressed and awake. But it was one of them who discovered me with a frightening look of pitiless admiration: "Tell me, Señor, aren't you the man who writes love letters in the paper?"<br /> I never would have imagined that a sleeping girl could cause so much devastation in me. I escaped the factory without saying goodbye or even wondering if one of those virgins in purgatory was at last the one I was seeking. When I walked out, the only feeling I had left in life was the desire to cry.<br /> Rosa Cabarcas called after a month with an incredible explanation: following the banker's murder, she had taken a well-deserved rest in Cartagena de Indias. I didn't believe her, of course, but I congratulated her on her good luck and allowed her to expatiate on her lie before asking the question boiling in my heart: "What about her?"<br /> Rosa Cabarcas fell silent for a long time. She's there, she said at last, but her voice became evasive: You have to wait a while. How long? I have no idea, I'll let you know. I felt she was getting away from me and I stopped her cold: Wait, you have to shed some light on this. There is no light, she said, and concluded: Be careful, you can do yourself harm and, above all, you can do her harm. I was in no mood for that kind of coyness. I pleaded for at least a chance to approach the truth. After all, I said, we're accomplices. She didn't take another step. Calm down, she said, the girl's all right and waiting for me to call her, but right now there's nothing to do and I'm not saying anything else. Goodbye.<br /> I was left holding the telephone, not knowing how to proceed, because I also knew her well enough to think I wouldn't get anything from her unless she chose to give it. Later in the afternoon I made a furtive visit to her house, trusting more to chance than to reason, and I found it still locked, sealed by the health department. I thought Rosa Cabarcas had called from somewhere else, perhaps from another city, and the mere idea filled me with dark presentiments. But at six that evening, when I least expected it, she pronounced my own password on the telephone: "All right, today's the day."<br /> At ten that night, tremulous and biting my lips to keep from crying, I arrived carrying boxes of Swiss chocolates, nougat, and candies, and a basket of fiery roses to cover the bed. The door was half-open, the lights turned on, and Brahms's First Sonata for Violin and Piano was being diluted at half volume on the radio. In the bed, Delgadina looked so radiant and so different that it was hard for me to recognize her.<br /> She had grown, but you could see this not in her stature but in an intense maturity that made her seem two or three years older, and more naked than ever. Her high cheekbones, her skin tanned by the suns of rough seas, her delicate lips, and her short curly hair imbued her face with the androgynous splendor of Praxiteles' _Apollo__. But no equivocation was possible, because her breasts had grown so much they didn't fit in my hand, her hips had finished developing, and her bones had become firmer and more harmonious. I was charmed by these achievements of nature but stunned by the artifice: false eyelashes, mother-of-pearl polish on the nails of her fingers and toes, and a cheap perfume that had nothing to do with love. Still, what drove me mad was the fortune she was wearing: gold earrings with clusters of emeralds, a necklace of natural pearls, a gold bracelet gleaming with diamonds, and rings with legitimate stones on every finger. On the chair was her evening dress covered with sequins and embroidery, and satin slippers. A strange vertigo rose from deep inside me.<br /> "Whore!" I shouted.<br /> For the devil breathed a sinister thought into my ear. And that was: on the night of the crime, Rosa Cabarcas could not have had the time or composure to warn the girl, and the police found her in the room, alone, a minor, with no alibi. Nobody like Rosa Cabarcas in a situation like that: she sold the girl's virginity to one of her big-shot clients in exchange for being cleared of the crime. The first thing, of course, was to disappear until the scandal died down. How marvelous! A honeymoon for three, the two of them in bed, and Rosa Cabarcas on a deluxe terrace enjoying her happy impunity. Blind with senseless fury, I began smashing everything in the room against the wall: lamps, radio, fan, mirrors, pitchers, glasses. I did it without haste but also without pause, with great crashes and a methodical intoxication that saved my life. The girl gave a start at the first explosion of noise but did not look at me; instead, she turned her back and remained that way, showing intermittent spasms, until the crashing ended. The chickens in the courtyard and the late-night dogs added to the uproar. With the blinding lucidity of rage I had a final inspiration to set fire to the house when the impassive figure of Rosa Cabarcas, dressed in a nightgown, appeared in the door. She said nothing. She made a visual inventory of the disaster and confirmed that the girl was curled up like a snail, her head hidden between her arms: terrified but intact.<br /> "My God!" Rosa Cabarcas exclaimed. "What I wouldn't have given for a love like this!"<br /> She looked at me from head to toe with a compassionate glance and commanded: Let's go. I followed her to the house, she poured me a glass of water in silence, gestured for me to sit down across from her, and prepared to hear my confession. All right, she said, now behave like an adult and tell me what's wrong.<br /> I told her what I considered my revealed truth. Rosa Cabarcas listened to me in silence, without surprise, and at last she seemed enlightened. How wonderful, she said. I've always said that jealousy knows more than truth does. And then, without reticence, she told me the reality. In effect, she said, in her confusion on the night of the crime she had forgotten about the girl sleeping in the room. One of her clients, who was also the dead man's lawyer, distributed benefits and bribes with a free hand and invited Rosa Cabarcas to stay at a quiet hotel in Cartagena de Indias until the scandal died down. Believe me, said Rosa Cabarcas, in all this time I never stopped thinking about you and the girl. I came back the day before yesterday and the first thing I did was call you, but there was no answer. On the other hand, the girl came right away, in such bad shape that I bathed her for you, dressed her for you, sent her to the hairdresser for you, and told them to make her as pretty as a queen. You saw how she looked: perfect. Her luxury clothes? One of the dresses I rent to my poorest girls when they have to go dancing with their clients. The jewels? They're mine, she said: All you have to do is touch them to see that the stones are glass and the precious metals tin. So stop fucking around, she concluded: Go on, wake her, beg her pardon, and take charge of her once and for all. Nobody deserves to be happier than you two.<br /> I made a superhuman effort to believe her, but love was stronger than reason. Whores! I said, tormented by the living flame burning in my belly. That's what you are! I shouted: Damned whores! I don't want to know any more about you, or about any other slut in this world, least of all her. From the door I made a gesture: goodbye forever. Rosa Cabarcas did not doubt it.<br /> "Go with God," she said, grimacing with sorrow, and she returned to her real life. "Anyway, I'll send you a bill for the mess you made in my room."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />5<br /><br /><br />As I WAS READING The Ides of March, I ran across an ominous sentence that the author attributes to Julius Caesar: In the end, it is impossible _not to become what others believe you are__. I could not confirm its real origin in the writing of Julius Caesar himself or in the works of his biographers, from Suetonius to Carcopinus, but it was worth knowing. Its fatalism, applied to the course of my life in the months that followed, gave me the determination I needed not only to write these memories but to begin them without diffidence, with the love of Delgadina.<br /> I did not have a moment's peace, I almost stopped eating, and I lost so much weight my trousers were loose around my waist. I had erratic pains in my bones, my mood would change for no reason, I spent my nights in a dazzled state that did not allow me to read or listen to music, while I wasted the days nodding in a stupefied somnolence that did not lead to sleep.<br /> Relief came from out of the blue. On the crowded Loma Fresca bus, a woman sitting next to me, whom I didn't see get on, whispered in my ear: Are you still fucking? It was Casilda Armenta, an old love-for-hire who had put up with me as an assiduous client from the time she was a haughty adolescent. When she retired, ailing and without a cent, she married a Chinese vegetable farmer who gave her his name and support, and perhaps a little love. At the age of seventy-three she weighed what she always had, was still beautiful, had a strong character, and maintained intact the audacious speech of her trade.<br /> She took me to her house, on a farm of Chinese laborers on a hill along the highway to the ocean. We sat on beach chairs on the shaded terrace, surrounded by ferns and the foliage of alstroemerias, and birdcages hanging from the eaves. On the side of the hill one could see the Chinese farmers in cone-shaped hats planting vegetables in the blazing sun, and the gray waters of the Bocas de Ceniza with the two dikes made of rocks that channel the river for several leagues into the sea. As we talked we saw a white ocean liner enter the outlet, and we followed it in silence until we heard its doleful bull's bellow at the river port. She sighed. Do you know something? In more than half a century, this is the first time I haven't received you in bed. We're not who we were, I said. She continued without hearing me: Every time they say things about you on the radio, applaud you for the affection people feel for you, call you the maestro of love, just imagine, I think that nobody knew your charms and your manias as well as I did. I'm serious, she said, nobody could have put up with you better.<br /> I could not bear it any more. She sensed it, saw my eyes wet with tears, and only then must have discovered I was no longer the man I had been, and I endured her glance with a courage I never thought I had. The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.<br /> It was impossible not to open my heart to her, and so I told her the complete story burning deep inside me, from my first call to Rosa Cabarcas on the eve of my ninetieth birthday to the tragic night when I smashed up the room and never went back. She listened to me unburden myself as if she were living through it herself, pondered it without haste, and at last she smiled.<br /> "Do whatever you want, but don't lose that child," she said. "There's no greater misfortune than dying alone."<br /> We went to Puerto Colombia in the little toy train as slow as a horse. We had lunch across from the worm-eaten wooden dock where everyone had entered the country before the Bocas de Ceniza was dredged. We sat under a roof of palm where large black matrons served fried red snapper with coconut rice and slices of green plantain. We dozed in the dense torpor of two o'clock and continued talking until the immense fiery sun sank into the ocean. Reality seemed fantastic to me. Look where our honeymoon has ended up, she mocked. But then she was serious: Today I look back, I see the line of thousands of men who passed through my beds, and I'd give my soul to have stayed with even the worst of them. Thank God I found my Chinaman in time. It's like being married to your little finger, but he's all mine.<br /> She looked into my eyes, gauged my reaction to what she had just told me, and said: So you go and find that poor creature right now even if what your jealousy tells you is true, no matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had. But one thing, no grandfather's romanticism. Wake her, fuck her brains out with that burro's cock the devil gave you as a reward for cowardice and stinginess. I'm serious, she concluded, speaking from the heart: Don't let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love.<br /> My hand trembled the next day when I dialed the number, as much because of the tension of my reunion with Delgadina as my uncertainty as to how Rosa Cabarcas would respond. We'd had a serious dispute over her abusive billing for the damage I'd done to her room. I had to sell one of the paintings most loved by my mother, estimated to be worth a fortune but at the moment of truth not amounting to a tenth of what I had hoped for. I increased that amount with the rest of my savings and took the money to Rosa Cabarcas with an unappealable ultimatum: Take it or leave it. It was a suicidal act, because if she had sold just one of my secrets she could have destroyed my good name. She did not dig in her heels, but she kept the paintings she had taken as security on the night of our argument. I was the absolute loser in a single play: I was left without Delgadina, without Rosa Cabarcas, and without the last of my savings. However, I listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times, and at last she said: Yes? My voice failed me. I hung up. I lay down in the hammock, trying to restore my serenity with the ascetic lyricism of Satie, and I perspired so much the canvas was soaked through. I did not have the courage to call again until the next day.<br /> "All right, woman," I said in a firm voice. "Today's the day."<br /> Rosa Cabarcas, of course, was above everything. Ah, my sad scholar, and she sighed with her invincible spirit, you disappear for two months and only come back to ask for illusions. She told me she hadn't seen Delgadina for more than a month, that the girl seemed to have recovered so well from her fright at my destructiveness that she didn't even mention it or ask for me, and was very happy in a new job, more comfortable and better-paid than sewing on buttons. A wave of living fire burned me inside. She can only be working as a whore, I said. Rosa replied without batting an eye: Don't be stupid, if that were true she'd be here. Where would she be better off? The rapidity of her logic made my doubts worse: And how do I know she isn't there? If she is, she replied, it's better for you not to know. Isn't that right? Once again I hated her. She was impervious and promised to track her down. Without much hope, because the neighbor's telephone where she used to call her had been turned off and she had no idea where the girl lived. But that was no reason to die, what the hell, she said, I'll call you in an hour.<br /> It was an hour that lasted three days, but she found the girl available and healthy. I returned, mortified, and kissed every inch of her, as penitence, from twelve that night until the roosters crowed. A long forgive-me that I promised myself I would continue to repeat forever, and it was like starting again from the beginning. The room had been dismantled, and hard usage had done away with everything I had put in it. Rosa Cabarcas had left it that way and said I would have to take care of any improvements as payment for what I still owed her. My economic situation, however, had touched bottom. The money from my pensions covered less and less. The few salable items left in the house--except for my mother's sacred jewels--lacked commercial value, and nothing was old enough to be an antique. In better days, the governor had made me a tempting offer to buy en bloc the books of Greek, Latin, and Spanish classics for the Departmental Library, but I didn't have the heart to sell them. Later, given political changes and the deterioration of the world, nobody in the government thought about either arts or letters. Weary of searching for a decent solution, I put the jewels that Delgadina had returned to me in my pocket and went to pawn them in a sinister alley that led to the public market. With the air of a distracted scholar I walked back and forth along that hellhole crowded with shabby taverns, secondhand bookstores, and pawn-shops, but the dignity of Florina de Dios blocked my way: I did not dare. Then I decided to sell them with head held high at the oldest and most reputable jewelry store.<br /> The salesman asked me a few questions as he examined the jewels with his loupe. He had the awe-inspiring demeanor and style of a physician. I explained that they were jewels inherited from my mother. He acknowledged each of my explanations with a grunt, and at last he removed the loupe.<br /> "I'm sorry," he said, "but they're the bottoms of bottles."<br /> Seeing my surprise, he explained with gentle commiseration: Just as well that the gold is gold and the platinum platinum. I touched my pocket to make certain I had brought the purchase receipts, and without querulousness I said: "Well, they were purchased in this noble house more than one hundred years ago."<br /> His expression did not change. It tends to happen, he said, that in inherited jewels the most valuable stones keep disappearing over time, replaced by wayward members of the family or criminal jewelers, and only when someone tries to sell them is the fraud discovered. But give me a second, he said, and he took the jewels and went through a door in the rear. After a moment he returned, and with no explanation indicated that I should take a seat, and he continued working.<br /> I examined the shop. I had gone there several times with my mother, and I remembered a recurring phrase: _Don't tell your papá__. All at once I had an idea that put me on edge: wasn't it possible that Rosa Cabarcas and Delgadina, by mutual agreement, had sold the legitimate stones and returned the jewels to me with fake ones?<br /> I was burning with doubts when a secretary asked me to follow her through the same door in the rear, into a small office with long bookshelves that held thick volumes. A colossal Bedouin at a desk on the far side of the office stood and shook my hand, calling me _tú__ with the effusiveness of an old friend. We were in secondary school together, he said by way of greeting. It was easy to remember him: he was the best soccer player in the school and the champion in our first brothels. I had lost track of him at some point, and I must have looked so decrepit to him that he confused me with a classmate from his childhood.<br /> Lying open on the glass top of the desk was one of the hefty tomes from the archive that contained the memory of my mother's jewelry. A precise account, with dates and details of how she in person had changed the stones of two generations of beautiful and worthy Cargamantos, and had sold the legitimate ones to this same store. It had occurred when the father of the current owner was at the front of the jewelry store and he and I were in school. But he reassured me: these little tricks were common practice among great families in difficult times to resolve financial emergencies without sacrificing honor. Faced with crude reality, I preferred to keep them as a memento of another Florina de Dios whom I never had known.<br /> Early in July I felt my true distance from death. My heart skipped beats and I began to see and feel all around me unmistakable presentiments of the end. The clearest occurred at a Bellas Artes concert. The air-conditioning had broken down, and the elite of arts and letters was cooking in a bain-marie in the crowded hall, but the magic of the music created a celestial climate. At the end, with the Allegretto poco mosso, I was shaken by the stunning revelation that I was listening to the last concert fate would afford me before I died. I did not feel sorrow or fear but an overwhelming emotion at having lived long enough to experience it.<br /> When at last, drenched with perspiration, I managed to make my way past embraces and photographs, to my surprise I ran into Ximena Ortiz, like a hundred-year-old goddess in her wheelchair. Her mere presence imposed its burden on me like a mortal sin. She had a tunic of ivory-colored silk as smooth as her skin, a three-loop strand of real pearls, hair the color of mother-of-pearl cut in the style of the 1920s, with the tip of a gull's wing on her cheek, and large yellow eyes illuminated by the natural shadow of dark circles. Everything about her contradicted the rumor that her mind was becoming a blank through an unredeemable erosion of her memory. Petrified and in front of her without resources, I overcame the fiery vapor that rose to my face and greeted her in silence with a Versaillesque bow. She smiled like a queen and grasped my hand. Then I realized that this too was one of fate's vindications, and I did not lose the opportunity to pull out a thorn that had bothered me for so long. I've dreamed of this moment for years, I said. She did not seem to understand. You don't say! she said. And who are you? I never knew if in fact she had forgotten or if it was the final revenge of her life.<br /> The certainty of being mortal, on the other hand, had taken me by surprise a short while before my fiftieth birthday on a similar occasion, a night during carnival when I danced an apache tango with a phenomenal woman whose face I never saw, heavier than me by forty pounds and taller by about a foot, yet who let herself be led like a feather in the wind. We danced so close together I could feel her blood circulating through her veins, and I was lulled by pleasure at her hard breathing, her ammoniac odor, her astronomical breasts, when I was shaken for the first time and almost knocked to the ground by the roar of death. It was like a brutal oracle in my ear: No matter what you do, this year or in the next hundred, you will be dead forever. She pulled away in fright: What's the matter? Nothing, I said, trying to control my heart: "I'm trembling because of you."<br /> From then on I began to measure my life not by years but by decades. The decade of my fifties had been decisive because I became aware that almost everybody was younger than I. The decade of my sixties was the most intense because of the suspicion that I no longer had the time to make mistakes. My seventies were frightening because of a certain possibility that the decade might be the last. Still, when I woke alive on the first morning of my nineties in the happy bed of Delgadina, I was transfixed by the agreeable idea that life was not something that passes by like Heraclitus' ever-changing river but a unique opportunity to turn over on the grill and keep broiling on the other side for another ninety years.<br /> I became a man of easy tears. Any emotion that had anything to do with tenderness brought a lump to my throat that I could not always control, and I thought about renouncing the solitary pleasure of watching over Delgadina's sleep, less for the uncertainty of my death than for the sorrow of imagining her without me for the rest of her life. On one of those uncertain days, I happened to find myself on the very noble Calle de los Notarios, and I was surprised to discover nothing more than the rubble of the cheap old hotel where I had been initiated by force into the arts of love a short while before my twelfth birthday. It had been the mansion of shipbuilders, splendid like few others in the city, with columns overlaid in alabaster and gilded friezes around an interior courtyard and a glass cupola in seven colors that shone with the brilliance of a conservatory. For more than a century, on the ground floor with its gothic door to the street, the colonial notary's offices had been located where my father worked, prospered, and was ruined throughout a lifetime of fantastic dreams. Little by little the historic families abandoned the upper floors, which came to be occupied by a legion of ladies of the night in straitened circumstances who went up and down the stairs until dawn with clients caught for a peso and a half in the taverns of the nearby river port.<br /> I was almost twelve, still wearing short pants and my elementary-school boots, and I could not resist the temptation of seeing the upper floors while my father debated in one of his interminable meetings, and I encountered a celestial sight. The women who sold their bodies at bargain prices until dawn moved around the house after eleven in the morning, when the heat from the stained glass became unbearable, and they were obliged to live their domestic life walking naked through the house while they shouted observations on the night's adventures. I was terrified. The only thing I could think of was to escape the way I had come in, when one of the naked women whose solid flesh was fragrant with rustic soap embraced me from behind and carried me to her pasteboard cubicle without my being able to see her, in the midst of shouts and applause from the bareskinned residents. She threw me face-up on her bed for four, removed my trousers in a masterful maneuver, and straddled me, but the icy terror that drenched my body kept me from receiving her like a man. That night, sleepless in my bed at home because of the shame of the assault, my longing to see her again would not allow me to sleep more than an hour. But the next morning, while night owls slept, I climbed trembling to her cubicle and woke her, weeping aloud with a crazed love that lasted until it was carried away without mercy by the violent wind of real life. Her name was Castorina and she was the queen of the house.<br /> The cubicles in the hotel cost a peso for transient loves, but very few of us knew they cost the same for up to twenty-four hours. Castorina also introduced me to her shabby world, where the women invited poor clients to their gala breakfasts, lent them their soap, tended to their toothaches, and in cases of extreme urgency gave them charitable love.<br /> But in the afternoons of my final old age no one remembered the immortal Castorina, dead for who knows how long, who had risen from the miserable corners of the river docks to the sacred throne of elder madam, wearing a pirate's patch over the eye she lost in a tavern brawl. Her last steady stud, a fortunate black from Camagüey called Jonás the Galley Slave, had been one of the great trumpet players in Havana until he lost his entire smile in a catastrophic train collision.<br /> When I left that bitter visit I felt the shooting pain in my heart that I had not been able to relieve for three days using every kind of household concoction. The doctor I went to as an emergency patient was a member of an illustrious family, the grandson of the doctor who had seen me when I was forty-two, and it frightened me that he looked the same, for his premature baldness, glasses of a hopeless myopic, and inconsolable sadness made him as aged as his grandfather had been at seventy. He made a meticulous examination of my entire body with the concentration of a goldsmith. He listened to my chest and back and checked my blood pressure, the reflexes in my knee, the depths of my eyes, the color of my lower lids. During pauses, while I changed position on the examining table, he asked me questions so vague and rapid I almost did not have time to think of the answers. After an hour he looked at me with a happy smile. Well, he said, I don't think there's anything I can do for you. What do you mean? That your condition is the best it can be at your age. How curious, I said, your grandfather told me the same thing when I was forty-two, and it's as if no time has passed. You'll always find someone who'll tell you this, he said, because you'll always be some age. Trying to provoke him into a terrifying sentence, I said: The only definitive thing is death. Yes, he said, but it isn't easy to get there when one's condition is as good as yours. I'm really sorry I can't oblige you.<br /> They were noble memories, but on the eve of August 29 I felt the immense weight of the century that lay ahead of me, impassive, as I climbed the stairs to my house with leaden steps. Then I saw my mother, Florina de Dios, in my bed, which had been hers until her death, and she gave me the same blessing she had given the last time I saw her, two hours before she died. In a state of emotional upheaval I understood this as the final warning, and I called Rosa Cabarcas to bring me my girl that very night, in the event that my hopes for surviving until the final breath of my ninetieth year went unfulfilled. I called her again at eight, and once again she repeated that it was not possible. It has to be, at any price, I shouted in terror. She hung up without saying goodbye, but fifteen minutes later she called back: "All right, she's here."<br /> I arrived at twenty past ten and handed Rosa Cabarcas the last letters of my life, with my arrangements for the girl after my terrible end. She thought I had been affected by the stabbing and said with a mocking air: If you're going to die don't do it here, just imagine. But I told her: Say I was run down by the Puerto Colombia train, that poor, pitiful piece of junk that couldn't kill anybody.<br /> That night, prepared for everything, I lay down on my back to wait for my final pain in the first instant of my ninety-first birthday. I heard distant bells, I detected the fragrance of Delgadina's soul as she slept on her side, I heard a shout on the horizon, the sobs of someone who perhaps had died a century earlier in the room. Then I put out the light with my last breath, intertwined my fingers with hers so I could lead her by the hand, and counted the twelve strokes of midnight with my twelve final tears until the roosters began to crow, followed by the bells of glory, the fiesta fireworks that celebrated the jubilation of having survived my ninetieth year safe and sound.<br /> My first words were for Rosa Cabarcas: I'll buy the house, everything, including the shop and the orchard. She said: Let's make an old people's bet, signed before a notary: whoever survives keeps everything that belongs to the other one. No, because if I die, everything has to be for her. It amounts to the same thing, said Rosa Cabarcas, I take care of the girl and then I leave her everything, what's yours and what's mine; I don't have anybody else in the world. In the meantime, we'll remodel your room and put in good plumbing, air-conditioning, and your books and music.<br /> "Do you think she'll agree?"<br /> "Ah, my sad scholar, it's all right for you to be old but not an asshole," said Rosa Cabarcas, weak with laughter. "That poor creature's head over heels in love with you."<br /> I went out to the street, radiant, and for the first time I could recognize myself on the remote horizon of my first century. My house, silent and in order at six-fifteen, began to enjoy the colors of a joyous dawn. Damiana was singing at the top of her voice in the kitchen, and the resuscitated cat twined his tail around my ankles and continued walking with me to my writing table. I was arranging my languishing papers, the inkwell, the goose quill, when the sun broke through the almond trees in the park and the river mail packet, a week late because of the drought, bellowed as it entered the canal in the port. It was, at last, real life, with my heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony of any day after my hundredth birthday.<br /> <br /><br />Translated by Edith GrossmanArchibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-18061961579590376672009-03-11T07:07:00.000-07:002009-03-11T07:11:00.602-07:00Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">By: Franz Kafka</span><br /><br /> ONE EVENING Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor, was climbing up to his apartment -- a laborious undertaking, for he lived on the sixth floor. While climbing up he thought, as he had so often recently, how unpleasant this utterly lonely life was: to reach his empty rooms he had to climb these six floors almost in secret, there put on his dressing gown, again almost in secret, light his pipe, read a little of the French magazine to which he had been subscribing for years, at the same time sip at a homemade kirsch, and finally, after half an hour, go to bed, but not before having completely rearranged his bedclothes which the unteachable charwoman would insist on arranging in her own way. Some companion, someone to witness these activities, would have been very welcome to Blumfeld. He had already been wondering whether he shouldn't acquire a little dog. These animals are gay and above all grateful and loyal; one of Blumfeld's colleagues has a dog of this kind; it follows no one but its master and when it hasn't seen him for a few moments it greets him at once with loud barkings, by which it is evidently trying to express its joy at once more finding that extraordinary benefactor, its master. True, a dog also has its drawbacks. However well kept it may be, it is bound to dirty the room. This just cannot be avoided; one cannot give it a hot bath each time before letting it into the room; besides, its health couldn't stand that. Blumfeld, on the other hand, can't stand dirt in his room. To him cleanliness is essential, and several times a week he is obliged to have words with his charwoman, who is unfortunately not very painstaking in this respect. Since she is hard of hearing he usually drags her by the arm to those spots in the room which he finds lacking in cleanliness. By this strict discipline he has achieved in his room a neatness more or less commensurate with his wishes. By acquiring a dog, however, he would be almost deliberately introducing into his room the dirt which hitherto he had been so careful to avoid. Fleas, the dog's constant companions, would appear. And once fleas were there, it would not be long before Blumfeld would be abandoning his comfortable room to the dog and looking for another one. Uncleanliness, however, is but one of the drawbacks of dogs. Dogs also fall ill and no one really understands dogs' diseases. Then the animal sits in a corner or limps about, whimpers, coughs, chokes from some pain; one wraps it in a rug, whistles a little melody, offers it milk -- in short, one nurses it in the hope that this, as indeed is possible, is a passing sickness while it may be a serious, disgusting, and contagious disease. And even if the dog remains healthy, one day it will grow old, one won't have the heart to get rid of the faithful animal in time, and then comes the moment when one's own age peers out at one from the dog's oozing eyes. Then one has to cope with the half-blind, weak-lunged animal all but immobile with fat, and in this way pay dearly for the pleasures the dog once had given. Much as Blumfeld would like to have a dog at this moment, he would rather go on climbing the stairs alone for another thirty years than be burdened later on by such an old dog which, sighing louder than he, would drag itself up, step by step.<br /> So Blumfeld will remain alone, after all; he really feels none of the old maid's longing to have around her some submissive living creature that she can protect, lavish her affection upon, and continue to serve -- for which purpose a cat, a canary, even a goldfish would suffice -- or, if this cannot be, rest content with flowers on the window sill. Blumfeld only wants a companion, an animal to which he doesn't have to pay much attention, which doesn't mind an occasional kick, which even, in an emergency, can spend the night in the street, but which nevertheless, when Blumfeld feels like it, is promptly at his disposal with its barking, jumping, and licking of hands. This is what Blumfeld wants, but since, as he realizes, it cannot be had without serious drawbacks, he renounces it, and yet -- in accordance with his thoroughgoing disposition -- the idea from time to time, this evening, for instance, occurs to him again.<br /> While taking the key from his pocket outside his room, he is startled by a sound coming from within. A peculiar rattling sound, very lively but very regular. Since Blumfeld has just been thinking of dogs, it reminds him of the sounds produced by paws pattering one after the other over a floor. But paws don't rattle, so it can't be paws. He quickly unlocks the door and switches on the light. He is not prepared for what he sees. For this is magic -- two small white celluloid balls with blue stripes jumping up and down side by side on the parquet; when one of them touches the floor the other is in the air, a game they continue ceaselessly to play. At school one day Blumfeld had seen some little pellets jumping about like this during a well-known electrical experiment, but these are comparatively large balls jumping freely about in the room and no electrical experiment is being made. Blumfeld bends down to get a good look at them. They are undoubtedly ordinary balls, they probably contain several smaller balls, and it is these that produce the rattling sound. Blumfeld gropes in the air to find out whether they are hanging from some threads -- no, they are moving entirely on their own. A pity Blumfeld isn't a small child, two balls like these would have been a happy surprise for him, whereas now the whole thing gives him rather an unpleasant feeling. It's not quite pointless after all to live in secret as an unnoticed bachelor, now someone, no matter who, has penetrated this secret and sent him these two strange balls.<br /> He tries to catch one but they retreat before him, thus luring him on to follow them through the room. It's really too silly, he thinks, running after balls like this; he stands still and realizes that the moment he abandons the pursuit, they too remain on the same spot. I will try to catch them all the same, he thinks again, and hurries toward them. They immediately run away, but Blumfeld, his legs apart, forces them into a corner of the room, and there, in front of a trunk, he manages to catch one ball. It's a small cool ball, and it turns in his hand, clearly anxious to slip away. And the other ball, too, as though aware of its comrade's distress, jumps higher than before, extending the leaps until it touches Blumfeld's hand. It beats against his hand, beats in ever faster leaps, alters its angle of attack, then, powerless against the hand which encloses the ball so completely, springs even higher and is probably trying to reach Blumfeld's face. Blumfeld could catch this ball too, and lock them both up somewhere, but at the moment it strikes him as too humiliating to take such measures against two little balls. Besides, it's fun owning these balls, and soon enough they'll grow tired, roll under the cupboard, and be quiet. Despite this deliberation, however, Blumfeld, near to anger, flings the ball to the ground, and it is a miracle that in doing so the delicate, all but transparent celluloid cover doesn't break. Without hesitation the two balls resume their former low, well-coordinated jumps.<br /> Blumfeld undresses calmly, arranges his clothes in the wardrobe which he always inspects carefully to make sure the charwoman has left everything in order. Once or twice he glances over his shoulder at the balls, which, unpursued, seem to be pursuing him; they have followed him and are now jumping close behind him. Blumfeld puts on his dressing gown and sets out for the opposite wall to fetch one of the pipes which are hanging in a rack. Before turning around he instinctively kicks his foot out backwards, but the balls know how to get out of its way and remain untouched. As Blumfeld goes off to fetch the pipe the balls at once follow close behind him; he shuffles along in his slippers, taking irregular steps, yet each step is followed almost without pause by the sound of the balls; they are keeping pace with him. To see how the balls manage to do this, Blumfeld turns suddenly around. But hardly has he turned when the balls describe a semicircle and are already behind him again, and this they repeat every time he turns. Like submissive companions, they try to avoid appearing in front of Blumfeld. Up to the present they have evidently dared to do so only in order to introduce themselves; now, however, it seems they have actually entered into his service.<br /> Hitherto, when faced with situations he couldn't master, Blumfeld had always chosen to behave as though he hadn't noticed anything. It had often helped and usually improved the situation. This, then, is what he does now; he takes up a position in front of the pipe rack and, puffing out his lips, chooses a pipe, fills it with particular care from the tobacco pouch close at hand, and allows the balls to continue their jumping behind him. But he hesitates to approach the table, for to hear the sound of the jumps coinciding with that of his own steps almost hurts him. So there he stands, and while taking an unnecessarily long time to fill his pipe he measures the distance separating him from the table. At last, however, he overcomes his faintheartedness and covers the distance with such stamping of feet that he cannot hear the balls. But the moment he is seated he can hear them jumping up and down behind his chair as distinctly as ever.<br /> Above the table, within reach, a shelf is nailed to the wall on which stands the bottle of kirsch surrounded by little glasses. Beside it, in a pile, lie several copies of the French magazine. (This very day the latest issue has arrived and Blumfeld takes it down. He quite forgets the kirsch; he even has the feeling that today he is proceeding with his usual activities only to console himself, for he feels no genuine desire to read. Contrary to his usual habit of carefully turning one page after the other, he opens the magazine at random and there finds a large photograph. He forces himself to examine it in detail. It shows a meeting between the Czar of Russia and the President of France. This takes place on a ship. All about as far as can be seen are many other ships, the smoke from their funnels vanishing in the bright sky. Both Czar and President have rushed toward each other with long strides and are clasping one another by the hand. Behind the Czar as well as behind the President stand two men. By comparison with the gay faces of the Czar and the President, the faces of their attendants are very solemn, the eyes of each group focused on their master. Lower down -- the scene evidently takes place on the top deck -- stand long lines of saluting sailors cut off by the margin. Gradually Blumfeld contemplates the picture with more interest, then holds it a little further away and looks at it with blinking eyes. He has always had a taste for such imposing scenes. The way the chief personages clasp each other's hand so naturally, so cordially and lightheartedly, this he finds most lifelike. And it's just as appropriate that the attendants -- high-ranking gentlemen, of course, with their names printed beneath -- express in their bearing the solemnity of the historical moment.)<br /> And instead of helping himself to everything he needs, Blumfeld sits there tense, staring at the bowl of his still unlit pipe. He is lying in wait. Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, his numbness leaves him and with a jerk he turns around in his chair. But the balls, equally alert, or perhaps automatically following the law governing them, also change their position the moment Blumfeld turns, and hide behind his back. Blumfeld now sits with his back to the table, the cold pipe in his hand. And now the balls jump under the table and, since there's a rug there, they are less audible. This is a great advantage: only faint, hollow noises can be heard, one has to pay great attention to catch their sound. Blumfeld, however, does pay great attention, and hears them distinctly. But this is so only for the moment, in a little while he probably won't hear them any more. The fact that they cannot make themselves more audible on the rug strikes Blumfeld as a great weakness on the part of the balls. What one has to do is lay one or even better two rugs under them and they are all but powerless. Admittedly only for a limited time, and besides, their very existence wields a certain power.<br /> Right now Blumfeld could have made good use of a dog, a wild young animal would soon have dealt with these balls; he imagines this dog trying to catch them with its paws, chasing them from their positions, hunting them all over the room, and finally getting hold of them between its teeth. It's quite possible that before long Blumfeld will acquire a dog.<br /> For the moment, however, the balls have no one to fear but Blumfeld, and he has no desire to destroy them just now, perhaps he lacks the necessary determination. He comes home in the evening tired from work and just when he is in need of some rest he is faced with this surprise. Only now does he realize how tired he really is. No doubt he will destroy the balls, and that in the near future, but not just yet, probably not until tomorrow. If one looks at the whole thing with an unprejudiced eye, the balls behave modestly enough. From time to time, for instance, they could jump into the foreground, show themselves, and then return again to their positions, or they could jump higher so as to beat against the tabletop in order to compensate themselves for the muffling effect of the rug. But this they don't do, they don't want to irritate Blumfeld unduly, they are evidently confining themselves to what is absolutely necessary.<br /> Even this measured necessity, however, is quite sufficient to spoil Blumfeld's rest at the table. He has been sitting there only a few minutes and is already considering going to bed. One of his motives for this is that he can't smoke here, for he has left the matches on his bedside table. Thus he would have to fetch these matches, but once having reached the bedside table he might as well stay there and lie down. For this he has an ulterior motive: he thinks that the balls, with their mania for keeping behind him, will jump onto the bed, and that there, in lying down, on purpose or not, he will squash them. The objection that what would then remain of the balls could still go on jumping, he dismisses. Even the unusual must have its limits. Complete balls jump anyway, even if not incessantly, but fragments of balls never jump, and consequently will not jump in this case, either. "Up!" he shouts, having grown almost reckless from this reflection and, the balls still behind him, he stamps off to bed. His hope seems to be confirmed, for when he purposely takes up a position quite near the bed, one ball promptly springs onto it. Then, however, the unexpected occurs: the other ball disappears under the bed. The possibility that the balls could jump under the bed as well had not occurred to Blumfeld. He is outraged about the one ball, although he is aware how unjust this is, for by jumping under the bed the ball fulfills its duty perhaps better than the ball on the bed. Now everything depends on which place the balls decide to choose, for Blumfeld does not believe that they can work separately for any length of time. And sure enough a moment later the ball on the floor also jumps onto the bed. Now I've got them, thinks Blumfeld, hot with joy, and tears his dressing gown from his body to throw himself into bed. At that moment, however, the very same ball jumps back under the bed. Overwhelmed with disappointment, Blumfeld almost collapses. Very likely the ball just took a good look around up there and decided it didn't like it. And now the other one has followed, too, and of course remains, for it's better down there. "Now I'll have these drummers with me all night," thinks Blumfeld, biting his lips and nodding his head.<br /> He feels gloomy, without actually knowing what harm the balls could do him in the night. He is a good sleeper, he will easily be able to ignore so slight a noise. To make quite sure of this and mindful of his past experience, he lays two rugs on the floor. It's as if he owned a little dog for which he wants to make a soft bed. And as though the balls had also grown tired and sleepy, their jumping has become lower and slower than before. As Blumfeld kneels beside the bed, lamp in hand, he thinks for a moment that the balls might come to rest on the rug -- they fall so weakly, roll so slowly along. Then, however, they dutifully rise again. Yet it is quite possible that in the morning when Blumfeld looks under the bed he'll find there two quiet, harmless children's balls.<br /> But it seems that they may not even be able to keep up their jumping until the morning, for as soon as Blumfeld is in bed he doesn't hear them anymore. He strains his ears, leans out of bed to listen -- not a sound. The effect of the rugs can't be as strong as that; the only explanation is that the balls are no longer jumping, either because they aren't able to bounce themselves off the rug and have therefore abandoned jumping for the time being or, which is more likely, they will never jump again. Blumfeld could get up and see exactly what's going on, but in his relief at finding peace at last he prefers to remain where he is. He would rather not risk disturbing the pacified balls even with his eyes. Even smoking he happily renounces, turns over on his side, and promptly goes to sleep.<br /> But he does not remain undisturbed; as usual he sleeps without dreaming, but very restlessly. Innumerable times during the night he is startled by the delusion that someone is knocking at his door. He knows quite well that no one is knocking; who would knock at night and at his lonely bachelor's door? Yet although he knows this for certain, he is startled again and again and each time glances in suspense at the door, his mouth open, eyes wide, a strand of hair trembling over his damp forehead. He tries to count how many times he has been woken but, dizzy from the huge numbers he arrives at, he falls back to sleep again. He thinks he knows where the knocking comes from; not from the door, but somewhere quite different; being heavy with sleep, however, he cannot quite remember on what his suspicions are based. All he knows is that innumerable tiny unpleasant sounds accumulate before producing the great strong knocking. He would happily suffer all the unpleasantness of the small sounds if he could be spared the actual knocking, but for some reason it's too late; he cannot interfere, the moment has passed, he can't even speak, his mouth opens but all that comes out is a silent yawn, and furious at this he thrusts his face into the pillows. Thus the night passes.<br /> In the morning he is awakened by the charwoman's knocking; with a sigh of relief he welcomes the gentle tap on the door whose inaudibility has in the past always been one of his sources of complaint. He is about to shout "Come in!" when he hears another lively, faint, yet all but belligerent knocking. It's the balls under the bed. Have they woken up? Have they, unlike him, gathered new strength overnight? "Just a moment," shouts Blumfeld to the charwoman, jumps out of bed, and, taking great care to keep the balls behind him, throws himself on the floor, his back still toward them; then, twisting his head over his shoulder, he glances at the balls and nearly lets out a curse. Like children pushing away blankets that annoy them at night, the balls have apparently spent all night pushing the rugs, with tiny twitching movements, so far away from under the bed that they are now once more on the parquet, where they can continue making their noise. "Back onto the rugs!" says Blumfeld with an angry face, and only when the balls, thanks to the rugs, have become quiet again, does he call in the charwoman. While she -- a fat, dull-witted, stiff-backed woman -- is laying the breakfast on the table and doing the few necessary chores, Blumfeld stands motionless in his dressing gown by his bed so as to keep the balls in their place. With his eyes he follows the charwoman to see whether she notices anything. This, since she is hard of hearing, is very unlikely, and the fact that Blumfeld thinks he sees the charwoman stopping here and there, holding on to some furniture and listening with raised eyebrows, he puts down to his overwrought condition caused by a bad night's sleep. It would relieve him if he could persuade the charwoman to speed up her work, but if anything she is slower than usual. She loads herself laboriously with Blumfeld's clothes and shuffles out with them into the corridor, stays away a long time, and the din she makes beating the clothes echoes in his ears with slow, monotonous thuds. And during all this time Blumfeld has to remain on the bed, cannot move for fear of drawing the balls behind him, has to let the coffee -- which he likes to drink as hot as possible -- get cold, and can do nothing but stare at the drawn blinds behind which the day is dimly dawning. At last the charwoman has finished, bids him good morning, and is about to leave; but before she actually goes she hesitates by the door, moves her lips a little, and takes a long look at Blumfeld. Blumfeld is about to remonstrate when she at last departs. Blumfeld longs to fling the door open and shout after her that she is a stupid, idiotic old woman. However, when he reflects on what he actually has against her, he can only think of the paradox of her having clearly noticed nothing and yet trying to give the impression that she has. How confused his thoughts have become! And all on account of a bad night. Some explanation for his poor sleep he finds in the fact that last night he deviated from his usual habits by not smoking or drinking any schnapps. When for once I don't smoke or drink schnapps -- and this is the result of his reflections -- I sleep badly.<br /> From now on he is going to take better care of his health, and he begins by fetching some cotton wool from his medicine chest which hangs over his bedside table and putting two little wads of it into his ears. Then he stands up and takes a trial step. Although the balls do follow he can hardly hear them; the addition of another wad makes them quite inaudible. Blumfeld takes a few more steps; nothing particularly unpleasant happens. Everyone for himself, Blumfeld as well as the balls, and although they are bound to one another they don't disturb each other. Only once, when Blumfeld turns around rather suddenly and one ball fails to make the countermovement fast enough, does he touch it with his knee. But this is the only incident. Otherwise Blumfeld calmly drinks his coffee; he is as hungry as though, instead of sleeping last night, he had gone for a long walk; he washes in cold, exceedingly refreshing water, and puts on his clothes. He still hasn't pulled up the blinds; rather, as a precaution, he has preferred to remain in semidarkness; he has no wish for the balls to be seen by other eyes. But now that he is ready to go he has somehow to provide for the balls in case they should dare -- not that he thinks they will -- to follow him into the street. He thinks of a good solution, opens the large wardrobe, and places himself with his back to it. As though divining his intention, the balls steer clear of the wardrobe's interior, taking advantage of every inch of space between Blumfeld and the wardrobe; when there's no other alternative they jump into the wardrobe for a moment, but when faced by the dark out they promptly jump again. Rather than be lured over the edge further into the wardrobe, they neglect their duty and stay by Blumfeld's side. But their little ruses avail them nothing, for now Blumfeld himself climbs backward into the wardrobe and they have to follow him. And with this their fate has been sealed, for on the floor of the wardrobe lie various smallish objects such as boots, boxes, small trunks which, although carefully arranged -- Blumfeld now regrets this -- nevertheless considerably hamper the balls. And when Blumfeld, having by now pulled the door almost to, jumps out of it with an enormous leap such as he has not made for years, slams the door, and turns the key, the balls are imprisoned. "Well, that worked," thinks Blumfeld, wiping the sweat from his face. What a din the balls are making in the wardrobe! It sounds as though they are desperate. Blumfeld, on the other hand, is very contented. He leaves the room and already the deserted corridor has a soothing effect on him. He takes the wool out of his ears and is enchanted by the countless sounds of the waking house. Few people are to be seen, it's still very early.<br /> Downstairs in the hall in front of the low door leading to the charwoman's basement apartment stands that woman's ten-year-old son. The image of his mother, not one feature of the woman has been omitted in this child's face. Bandy-legged, hands in his trouser pockets, he stands there wheezing, for he already has a goiter and can breathe only with difficulty. But whereas Blumfeld, whenever the boy crosses his path, usually quickens his step to spare himself the spectacle, today he almost feels like pausing for a moment. Even if the boy has been brought into the world by this woman and shows every sign of his origin, he is nevertheless a child, the thoughts of a child still dwell in this shapeless head, and if one were to speak to him sensibly and ask him something, he would very likely answer in a bright voice, innocent and reverential, and after some inner struggle one could bring oneself to pat these cheeks. Although this is what Blumfeld thinks, he nevertheless passes him by. In the street he realizes that the weather is pleasanter than he had suspected from his room. The morning mist has dispersed and patches of blue sky have appeared, brushed by a strong wind. Blumfeld has the balls to thank for his having left his room much earlier than usual; even the paper he has left unread on the table; in any case he has saved a great deal of time and can now afford to walk slowly. It is remarkable how little he worries about the balls now that he is separated from them. So long as they were following him they could have been considered as something belonging to him, something which, in passing judgment on his person, had somehow to be taken into consideration. Now, however, they were mere toys in his wardrobe at home. And it occurs to Blumfeld that the best way of rendering the balls harmless would be to put them to their original use. There in the hall stands the boy; Blumfeld will give him the balls, not lend them, but actually present them to him, which is surely tantamount to ordering their destruction. And even if they were to remain intact they would mean even less in the boy's hands than in the wardrobe, the whole house would watch the boy playing with them, other children would join in, and the general opinion that the balls are things to play with and in no way life companions of Blumfeld would be firmly and irrefutably established. Blumfeld runs back into the house. The boy has just gone down the basement stairs and is about to open the door. So Blumfeld has to call the boy and pronounce his name, a name that to him seems as ludicrous as everything else connected with the child. "Alfred! Alfred!" he shouts. The boy hesitates for a long time. "Come here!" shouts Blumfeld, "I've got something for you." The janitor's two little girls appear from the door opposite and, full of curiosity, take up positions on either side of Blumfeld. They grasp the situation much more quickly than the boy and cannot understand why he doesn't come at once. Without taking their eyes off Blumfeld they beckon to the boy, but cannot fathom what kind of present is awaiting Alfred. Tortured with curiosity, they hop from one foot to the other. Blumfeld laughs at them as well as at the boy. The latter seems to have figured it all out and climbs stiffly, clumsily up the steps. Not even in his gait can he manage to belie his mother, who, incidentally, has appeared in the basement doorway. To make sure that the charwoman also understands and in the hope that she will supervise the carrying out of his instructions, should it be necessary, Blumfeld shouts excessively loud. "Up in my room," says Blumfeld, "I have two lovely balls. Would you like to have them?" Not knowing how to behave, the boy simply screws up his mouth, turns around, and looks inquiringly down at his mother. The girls, however, promptly begin to jump around Blumfeld and ask him for the balls. "You will be allowed to play with them too," Blumfeld tells them, but waits for the boy's answer. He could of course give the balls to the girls, but they strike him as too unreliable and for the moment he has more confidence in the boy. Meanwhile, the latter, without having exchanged a word, has taken counsel with his mother and nods his assent to Blumfeld's repeated question. "Then listen," says Blumfeld, who is quite prepared to receive no thanks for his gift. "Your mother has the key of my door, you must borrow it from her. But here is the key of my wardrobe, and in the wardrobe you will find the balls. Take good care to lock the wardrobe and the room again. But with the balls you can do what you like and you don't have to bring them back. Have you understood me?"<br /> Unfortunately, the boy has not understood. Blumfeld has tried to make everything particularly clear to this hopelessly dense creature, but for this very reason has repeated everything too often, has in turn too often mentioned keys, room, and wardrobe, and as a result the boy stares at him as though he were rather a seducer than his benefactor. The girls, on the other hand, have understood everything immediately, press against Blumfeld, and stretch out their hands for the key. "Wait a moment," says Blumfeld, by now annoyed with them all. Time, moreover, is passing, he can't stand about much longer. If only the mother would say that she has understood him and take matters in hand for the boy! Instead of which she still stands down by the door, smiles with the affectation of the bashful deaf, and is probably under the impression that Blumfeld up there has suddenly fallen for the boy and is hearing him his lessons. Blumfeld on the other hand can't very well climb down the basement stairs and shout into the charwoman's ear to make her son for God's sake relieve him of the balls! It had required enough of his self-control as it was to entrust the key of his wardrobe for a whole day to this family. It is certainly not in order to save himself trouble that he is handing the key to the boy rather than himself leading the boy up and there giving him the balls. But he can't very well first give the balls away and then immediately deprive the boy of them by -- as would be bound to happen -- drawing them after him as his followers. "So you still don't understand me?" asks Blumfeld almost wistfully after having started a fresh explanation which, however, he immediately interrupts at sight of the boy's vacant stare. So vacant a stare renders one helpless. It could tempt one into saying more than one intends, if only to fill the vacancy with sense. Whereupon "We'll fetch the balls for him!" shout the girls. They are shrewd and have realized that they can obtain the balls only through using the boy as an intermediary, but that they themselves have to bring about this mediation. From the janitor's room a clock strikes, warning Blumfeld to hurry. "Well, then, take the key," says Blumfeld, and the key is more snatched from his hand than given by him. He would have handed it to the boy with infinitely more confidence. "The key to the room you'll have to get from the woman," Blumfeld adds. "And when you return with the balls you must hand both keys to her." "Yes, yes!" shout the girls and run down the steps. They know everything, absolutely everything; and as though Blumfeld were infected by the boy's denseness, he is unable to understand how they could have grasped everything so quickly from his explanations.<br /> Now they are already tugging at the charwoman's skirt but, tempting as it would be, Blumfeld cannot afford to watch them carrying out their task, not only because it's already late, but also because he has no desire to be present at the liberation of the balls. He would in fact far prefer to be several streets away when the girls first open the door of his room. After all, how does he know what else he might have to expect from these balls! And so for the second time this morning he leaves the house. He has one last glimpse of the charwoman defending herself against the girls, and of the boy stirring his bandy legs to come to his mother's assistance. It's beyond Blumfeld's comprehension why a creature like this servant should prosper and propagate in this world.<br /> While on his way to the linen factory, where Blumfeld is employed, thoughts about his work gradually get the upper hand. He quickens his step and, despite the delay caused by the boy, he is the first to arrive in his office. This office is a glass-enclosed room containing a writing desk for Blumfeld and two standing desks for the two assistants subordinate to him. Although these standing desks are so small and narrow as to suggest they are meant for schoolchildren, this office is very crowded and the assistants cannot sit down, for then there would be no place for Blumfeld's chair. As a result they stand all day, pressed against their desks. For them of course this is very uncomfortable, but it also makes it very difficult for Blumfeld to keep an eye on them. They often press eagerly against their desks not so much in order to work as to whisper to one another or even to take forty winks. They give Blumfeld a great deal of trouble; they don't help him sufficiently with the enormous amount of work that is imposed on him. This work involves supervising the whole distribution of fabrics and cash among the women homeworkers who are employed by the factory for the manufacture of certain fancy commodities. To appreciate the magnitude of this task an intimate knowledge of the general conditions is necessary. But since Blumfeld's immediate superior has died some years ago, no one any longer possesses this knowledge, which is also why Blumfeld cannot grant anyone the right to pronounce an opinion on his work. The manufacturer, Herr Ottomar, for instance, clearly underestimates Blumfeld's work; no doubt he recognizes that in the course of twenty years Blumfeld has deserved well of the factory, and this he acknowledges not only because he is obliged to, but also because he respects Blumfeld as a loyal, trustworthy person. -- He underestimates his work, nevertheless, for he believes it could be conducted by methods more simple and therefore in every respect more profitable than those employed by Blumfeld. It is said, and it is probably not incorrect, that Ottomar shows himself so rarely in Blumfeld's department simply to spare himself the annoyance that the sight of Blumfeld's working methods causes him. To be so unappreciated is undoubtedly sad for Blumfeld, but there is no remedy, for he cannot very well compel Ottomar to spend let us say a whole month on end in Blumfeld's department in order to study the great variety of work being accomplished there, to apply his own allegedly better methods, and to let himself be convinced of Blumfeld's soundness by the collapse of the department -- which would be the inevitable result. And so Blumfeld carries on his work undeterred as before, gives a little start whenever Ottomar appears after a long absence, then with the subordinate's sense of duty makes a feeble effort to explain to Ottomar this or that arrangement, whereupon the latter, his eyes lowered and giving a silent nod, passes on. But what worries Blumfeld more than this lack of appreciation is the thought that one day he will be compelled to leave his job, the immediate consequence of which will be pandemonium, a confusion no one will be able to straighten out because so far as he knows there isn't a single soul in the factory capable of replacing him and of carrying on his job in a manner that could be relied upon to prevent months of the most serious interruptions. Needless to say, if the boss underestimates an employee the latter's colleagues try their best to surpass him in this respect. In consequence everyone underestimates Blumfeld's work; no one considers it necessary to spend any time training in Blumfeld's department, and when new employees are hired not one of them is ever assigned to Blumfeld. As a result Blumfeld's department lacks a younger generation to carry on. When Blumfeld, who up to then had been managing the entire department with the help of only one servant, demanded an assistant, weeks of bitter fighting ensued. Almost every day Blumfeld appeared in Ottomar's office and explained to him calmly and in minute detail why an assistant was needed in his department. He was needed not by any means because Blumfeld wished to spare himself, Blumfeld had no intention of sparing himself, he was doing more than his share of work and this he had no desire to change, but would Herr Ottomar please consider how in the course of time the business had grown, how every department had been correspondingly enlarged, with the exception of Blumfeld's department, which was invariably forgotten! And would he consider too how the work had increased just there! When Blumfeld had entered the firm, a time Herr Ottomar probably could not remember, they had employed some ten seamstresses, today the number varied between fifty and sixty. Such a job requires great energy; Blumfeld could guarantee that he was completely wearing himself out in this work, but that he will continue to master it completely he can henceforth no longer guarantee. True, Herr Ottomar had never flatly refused Blumfeld's requests, this was something he could not do to an old employee, but the manner in which he hardly listened, in which he talked to others over Blumfeld's head, made halfhearted promises and had forgotten everything in a few days -- this behavior was insulting, to say the least. Not actually to Blumfeld, Blumfeld is no romantic, pleasant as honor and recognition may be, Blumfeld can do without them, in spite of everything he will stick to his desk as long as it is at all possible, in any case he is in the right, and right, even though on occasion it may take a long time, must prevail in the end. True, Blumfeld has at last been given two assistants, but what assistants! One might have thought Ottomar had realized he could express his contempt for the department even better by granting rather than by refusing it these assistants. It was even possible that Ottomar had kept Blumfeld waiting so long because he was looking for two assistants just like these, and -- as may be imagined -- took a long time to find them. And now of course Blumfeld could no longer complain; if he did, the answer could easily be foreseen: after all, he had asked for one assistant and had been given two, that's how cleverly Ottomar had arranged things. Needless to say, Blumfeld complained just the same, but only because his predicament all but forced him to do so, not because he still hoped for any redress. Nor did he complain emphatically, but only by the way, whenever the occasion arose. Nevertheless, among his spiteful colleagues the rumor soon spread that someone had asked Ottomar if it were really possible that Blumfeld, who after all had been given such unusual aid, was still complaining. To which Ottomar answered that this was correct, Blumfeld was still complaining, and rightly so. He, Ottomar, had at last realized this and he intended gradually to assign to Blumfeld one assistant for each seamstress, in other words some sixty in all. In case this number should prove insufficient, however, he would let him have even more and would not cease until the bedlam, which had been developing for years in Blumfeld's department, was complete. Now it cannot be denied that in this remark Ottomar's manner of speech had been cleverly imitated, but Blumfeld had no doubts whatever that Ottomar would not dream of speaking about him in such a way. The whole thing was a fabrication of the loafers in the offices on the first floor. Blumfeld ignored it -- if only he could as calmly have ignored the presence of the assistants! But there they stood, and could not be spirited away. Pale, weak children. According to their credentials they had already passed school age, but in reality this was difficult to believe. In fact their rightful place was so clearly at their mother's knee that one would hardly have dared to entrust them to a teacher. They still couldn't even move properly; standing up for any length of time tired them inordinately, especially when they first arrived. When left to themselves they promptly doubled up in their weakness, standing hunched and crooked in their corner. Blumfeld tried to point out to them that if they went on giving in to their indolence they would become cripples for life. To ask the assistants to make the slightest move was to take a risk; once when one of them had been ordered to carry something a short distance, he had run so eagerly that he had banged his knee against a desk. The room had been full of seamstresses, the desks covered in merchandise, but Blumfeld had been obliged to neglect everything and take the sobbing assistant into the office and there bandage his wound. Yet even this zeal on the part of the assistant was superficial; like actual children they tried once in a while to excel, but far more often -- indeed almost always -- they tried to divert their superior's attention and to cheat him. Once, at a time of the most intensive work, Blumfeld had rushed past them, dripping with sweat, and had observed them secretly swapping stamps among the bales of merchandise. He had felt like banging them on the head with his fists, it would have been the only possible punishment for such behavior, but they were after all only children and Blumfeld could not very well knock children down. And so he continued to put up with them. Originally he had imagined that the assistants would help him with the essential chores which at the moment of the distribution of goods required so much effort and vigilance. He had imagined himself standing in the center behind his desk, keeping an eye on everything, and making the entries in the books while the assistants ran to and fro, distributing everything according to his orders. He had imagined that his supervision, which, sharp as it was, could not cope with such a crowd, would be complemented by the assistants' attention; he had hoped that these assistants would gradually acquire experience, cease depending entirely on his orders, and finally learn to discriminate on their own between the seamstresses as to their trustworthiness and requirements. Blumfeld soon realized that all these hopes had been in vain and that he could not afford to let them even talk to the seamstresses. From the beginning they had ignored some of the seamstresses, either from fear or dislike; others to whom they felt partial they would sometimes run to meet at the door. To them the assistants would bring whatever the women wanted, pressing it almost secretly into their hands, although the seamstresses were perfectly entitled to receive it, would collect on a bare shelf for these favorites various cuttings, worthless remnants, but also a few still useful odds and ends, waving them blissfully at the women behind Blumfeld's back and in return having sweets popped into their mouths. Blumfeld of course soon put an end to this mischief and the moment the seamstresses arrived he ordered the assistants back into their glass-enclosed cubicles. But for a long time they considered this to be a grave injustice, they sulked, willfully broke their nibs, and sometimes, although not daring to raise their heads, even knocked loudly against the glass panes in order to attract the seamstresses' attention to the bad treatment that in their opinion they were suffering at Blumfeld's hands.<br /> The wrong they do themselves the assistants cannot see. For instance, they almost always arrive late at the office. Blumfeld, their superior, who from his earliest youth has considered it natural to arrive half an hour before the office opens -- not from ambition or an exaggerated sense of duty but simply from a certain feeling of decency -- often has to wait more than an hour for his assistants. Chewing his breakfast roll he stands behind his desk, looking through the accounts in the seamstresses' little books. Soon he is immersed in his work and thinking of nothing else when suddenly he receives such a shock that his pen continues to tremble in his hand for some while afterwards. One of the assistants has dashed in, looking as though he is about to collapse; he is holding on to something with one hand while the other is pressed against his heaving chest. All this, however, simply means that he is making excuses for being late, excuses so absurd that Blumfeld purposely ignores them, for if he didn't he would have to give the young man a well-deserved thrashing. As it is, he just glances at him for a moment, points with outstretched hand at the cubicle, and turns back to his work. Now one really might expect the assistant to appreciate his superior's kindness and hurry to his place. No, he doesn't hurry, he dawdles about, he walks on tiptoe, slowly placing one foot in front of the other. Is he trying to ridicule his superior? No. Again it's just that mixture of fear and self-complacency against which one is powerless. How else explain the fact that even today Blumfeld, who has himself arrived unusually late in the office and now after a long wait -- he doesn't feel like checking the books -- sees, through the clouds of dust raised by the stupid servant with his broom, the two assistants sauntering peacefully along the street? Arm in arm, they appear to be telling one another important things which, however, are sure to have only the remotest and very likely irreverent connections with the office. The nearer they approach the glass door, the slower they walk. One of them seizes the door handle but fails to turn it; they just go on talking, listening, laughing. "Hurry out and open the door for our gentlemen!" shouts Blumfeld at the servant, throwing up his hands. But when the assistants come in, Blumfeld no longer feels like quarreling, ignores their greetings, and goes to his desk. He starts doing his accounts, but now and again glances up to see what his assistants are up to. One of them seems to be very tired and rubs his eyes. When hanging up his overcoat he takes the opportunity to lean against the wall. On the street he seemed lively enough, but the proximity of work tires him. The other assistant, however, is eager to work, but only work of a certain kind. For a long time it has been his wish to be allowed to sweep. But this is work to which he is not entitled; sweeping is exclusively the servant's job; in itself Blumfeld would have nothing against the assistant sweeping, let the assistant sweep, he can't make a worse job of it than the servant, but if the assistant wants to sweep then he must come earlier, before the servant begins to sweep, and not spend on it time that is reserved exclusively for office work. But since the young man is totally deaf to any sensible argument, at least the servant -- that half-blind old buffer whom the boss would certainly not tolerate in any department but Blumfeld's and who is still alive only by the grace of the boss and God -- at least the servant might be sensible and hand the broom for a moment to the young man who, being clumsy, would soon lose his interest and run after the servant with the broom in order to persuade him to go on sweeping. It appears, however, that the servant feels especially responsible for the sweeping; one can see how he, the moment the young man approaches him, tries to grasp the broom more firmly with his trembling hands; he even stands still and stops sweeping so as to direct his full attention to the ownership of the broom. The assistant doesn't actually plead in words, for he is afraid of Blumfeld, who is ostensibly doing his accounts; moreover, ordinary speech is useless, since the servant can be made to hear only by excessive shouting. So at first the assistant tugs the servant by the sleeve. The servant knows, of course, what it is about, glowers at the assistant, shakes his head, and pulls the broom nearer, up to his chest. Whereupon the assistant folds his hands and pleads. Actually, he has no hope of achieving anything by pleading, but the pleading amuses him and so he pleads. The other assistant follows the goings-on with low laughter and seems to think, heaven knows why, that Blumfeld can't hear him. The pleading makes not the slightest impression on the servant, who turns around and thinks he can safely use the broom again. The assistant, however, has skipped after him on tiptoe and, rubbing his hands together imploringly, now pleads from another side. This turning of the one and skipping of the other is repeated several times. Finally the servant feels cut off from all sides and realizes something which, had he been slightly less stupid, he might have realized from the beginning -- that he will be tired out long before the assistant. So, looking for help elsewhere, he wags his finger at the assistant and points at Blumfeld, suggesting that he will lodge a complaint if the assistant refuses to desist. The assistant realizes that if he is to get the broom at all he'll have to hurry, so he impudently makes a grab for it. An involuntary scream from the other assistant heralds the imminent decision. The servant saves the broom once more by taking a step back and dragging it after him. But now the assistant is up in arms: with open mouth and flashing eyes he leaps forward, the servant tries to escape, but his old legs wobble rather than run, the assistant tugs at the broom and though he doesn't succeed in getting it he nevertheless causes it to drop and in this way it is lost to the servant. Also apparently to the assistant for, the moment the broom falls, all three, the two assistants and the servant, are paralyzed, for now Blumfeld is bound to discover everything. And sure enough Blumfeld at his peephole glances up as though taking in the situation only now. He stares at each one with a stern and searching eye, even the broom on the floor does not escape his notice. Perhaps the silence has lasted too long or perhaps the assistant can no longer suppress his desire to sweep, in any case he bends down -- albeit very carefully, as though about to grab an animal rather than a broom -- seizes it, passes it over the floor, but, when Blumfeld jumps up and steps out of his cubicle, promptly casts it aside in alarm. "Both of you back to work! And not another sound out of you!" shouts Blumfeld, and with an outstretched hand he directs the two assistants back to their desks. They obey at once, but not shamefaced or with lowered heads, rather they squeeze themselves stiffly past Blumfeld, staring him straight in the eye as though trying in this way to stop him from beating them. Yet they might have learned from experience that Blumfeld on principle never beats anyone. But they are overapprehensive, and without any tact keep trying to protect their real or imaginary rights.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-53854907276610498632009-03-04T08:51:00.000-08:002009-03-04T08:54:04.889-08:00The Cloak<span style="font-weight: bold;">By Nikolay V. Gogol</span><br /><br /><br />In the department of----, but it is better not to mention the department. The touchiest things in the world are departments, regiments, courts of justice, in a word, all branches of public service. Each individual nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person. Quite recently, a complaint was received from a district chief of police in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar's sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a romance, in which the district chief of police is made to appear about once in every ten pages, and sometimes in a downright drunken condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be better to designate the department in question, as a certain department.<br /><br />So, in a certain department there was a certain official--not a very notable one, it must be allowed--short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and mole-eyed, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. The St. Petersburg climate was responsible for this. As for his official rank--with us Russians the rank comes first--he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.<br /><br />His family name was Bashmachkin. This name is evidently derived from bashmak (shoe); but, when, at what time, and in what manner, is not known. His father and grandfather, and all the Bashmachkins, always wore boots, which were resoled two or three times a year. His name was Akaky Akakiyevich. It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other.<br /><br />This was how it came about.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich was born, if my memory fails me not, in the evening on the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of a Government official, and a very fine woman, made all due arrangements for having the child baptised. She was lying on the bed opposite the door; on her right stood the godfather, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin, a most estimable man, who served as the head clerk of the senate; and the godmother, Arina Semyonovna Bielobrinshkova, the wife of an officer of the quarter, and a woman of rare virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three names, Mokiya, Sossiya, or that the child should be called after the martyr Khozdazat. "No," said the good woman, "all those names are poor." In order to please her, they opened the calendar at another place; three more names appeared, Triphily, Dula, and Varakhasy. "This is awful," said the old woman. "What names! I truly never heard the like. I might have put up with Varadat or Varukh, but not Triphily and Varakhasy!" They turned to another page and found Pavsikakhy and Vakhtisy. "Now I see," said the old woman, "that it is plainly fate. And since such is the case, it will be better to name him after his father. His father's name was Akaky, so let his son's name be Akaky too." In this manner he became Akaky Akakiyevich. They christened the child, whereat he wept, and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor.<br /><br />In this manner did it all come about. We have mentioned it in order that the reader might see for himself that it was a case of necessity, and that it was utterly impossible to give him any other name.<br /><br />When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same attitude, the same occupation--always the letter-copying clerk--so that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in uniform with a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. The porter not only did not rise from his seat when he passed, but never even glanced at him, any more than if a fly had flown through the reception-room. His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper under his nose without so much as saying, "Copy," or, "Here's an interesting little case," or anything else agreeable, as is customary amongst well-bred officials. And he took it, looking only at the paper, and not observing who handed it to him, or whether he had the right to do so; simply took it, and set about copying it.<br /><br />The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakiyevich answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work. Amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter. But if the joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his head, and prevented his attending to his work, he would exclaim:<br /><br />"Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?"<br /><br />And there was something strange in the words and the voice in which they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to pity; so much so that one young man, a newcomer, who, taking pattern by the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akaky, suddenly stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition that they were decent, well-bred men. Long afterwards, in his gayest moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald forehead, with his heart-rending words, "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded--"I am thy brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath refined, cultured, worldly refinement, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and upright.<br /><br />It would be difficult to find another man who lived so entirely for his duties. It is not enough to say that Akaky laboured with zeal; no, he laboured with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment was written on his face; some letters were even favourites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have been made even a councillor of state. But he worked, as his companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.<br /><br />However, it would be untrue to say that no attention was paid to him. One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his long service, ordered him to be given something more important than mere copying. So he was ordered to make a report of an already concluded affair, to another department; the duty consisting simply in changing the heading and altering a few words from the first to the third person. This caused him so much toil, that he broke into a perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, "No, give me rather something to copy." After that they let him copy on forever.<br /><br />Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes. His uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty-meal colour. The collar was low, so that his neck, in spite of the fact that it was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged from it, like the necks of the plaster cats which pedlars carry about on their heads. And something was always sticking to his uniform, either a bit of hay or some trifle. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack, as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as all sorts of rubbish was being flung out of it; hence he always bore about on his hat scraps of melon rinds, and other such articles. Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day to the street; while it is well known that his young brother officials trained the range of their glances till they could see when any one's trouser-straps came undone upon the opposite sidewalk, which always brought a malicious smile to their faces. But Akaky Akakiyevich saw in all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines; and only when a horse thrust his nose, from some unknown quarter, over his shoulder, and sent a whole gust of wind down his neck from his nostrils, did he observe that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of the street.<br /><br />On reaching home, he sat down at once at the table, sipped his cabbage-soup up quickly, and swallowed a bit of beef with onions, never noticing their taste, and gulping down everything with flies and anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment. When he saw that his stomach was beginning to swell, he rose from the table, and copied papers which he had brought home. If there happened to be none, he took copies for himself, for his own gratification, especially if the document was noteworthy, not on account of its style, but of its being addressed to some distinguished person.<br /><br />Even at the hour when the grey St. Petersburg sky had quite disappeared, and all the official world had eaten or dined, each as he could, in accordance with the salary he received and his own fancy; when, all were resting from the department jar of pens, running to and fro, for their own and other people's indispensable occupations', and from all the work that an uneasy man makes willingly for himself, rather than what is necessary; when, officials hasten to dedicate to pleasure the time which is left to them, one bolder than the rest, going to the theatre; another; into the street looking under the bonnets; another, wasting his evening in compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official circle; another--and this is the common case of all--visiting his comrades on the third or fourth floor, in two small rooms with an ante-room or kitchen, and some pretensions to fashion, such as a lamp or some other trifle which has cost many a sacrifice of dinner or pleasure trip; in a word, at the hour when all officials disperse among the contracted quarters of their friends, to play whist, as they sip their tea from glasses with a kopek's worth of sugar, smoke long pipes, relate at time some bits of gossip which a Russian man can never, under any circumstances, refrain from, and when there is nothing else to talk of, repeat eternal anecdotes about the commandant to whom they had sent word that the tails of the horses on the Falconet Monument had been cut off; when all strive to divert themselves, Akaky Akakiyevich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one could even say that he had seen him at any kind of evening party. Having written to his heart's content, he lay down to sleep, smiling at the thought of the coming day--of what God might send him to copy on the morrow.<br /><br />Thus flowed on the peaceful life of the man, who, with a salary of four hundred rubles, understood how to be content with his lot; and thus it would have continued to flow on, perhaps, to extreme old age, were it not that there are various ills strewn along the path of life for titular councillors as well as for private, actual, court, and every other species of councillor, even to those who never give any advice or take any themselves.<br /><br />There exists in St. Petersburg a powerful foe of all who receive a salary of four hundred rubles a year, or there-abouts. This foe is no other than the Northern cold, although it is said to be very healthy. At nine o'clock in the morning, at the very hour when the streets are filled with men bound for the various official departments, it begins to bestow such powerful and piercing nips on all noses impartially, that the poor officials really do not know what to do with them. At an hour, when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes quite unprotected. Their only salvation lies in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little cloaks, five or six streets, and then warming their feet in the porter's room, and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official service, which had become frozen on the way.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich had felt for some time that his back and shoulders were paining with peculiar poignancy, in spite of the fact that he tried to traverse the distance with all possible speed. He began finally to wonder whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. He examined it thoroughly at home, and discovered that in two places, namely, on the back and shoulders, it had become thin as gauze. The cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces. You must know that Akaky Akakiyevich's cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials. They even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make, its collar diminishing year by year to serve to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akaky Akakiyevich decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovich, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a dark staircase, and who, in spite of his having but one eye and pock-marks all over his face, busied himself with considerable success in repairing the trousers and coats of officials and others; that is to say, when he was sober and not nursing some other scheme in his head.<br /><br />It is not necessary to say much about this tailor, but as it is the custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly defined there is no help for it, so here is Petrovich the tailor. At first he was called only Grigory, and was some gentleman's serf. He commenced calling himself Petrovich from the time when he received his free papers, and further began to drink heavily on all holidays, at first on the great ones, and then on all church festivals without discrimination, wherever a cross stood in the calendar. On this point he was faithful to ancestral custom; and when quarrelling with his wife, he called her a low female and a German. As we have mentioned his wife, it will be necessary to say a word or two about her. Unfortunately, little is known of her beyond the fact that Petrovich had a wife, who wore a cap and a dress, but could not lay claim to beauty, at least, no one but the soldiers of the guard even looked under her cap when they met her.<br /><br />Ascending the staircase which led to Petrovich's room--which staircase was all soaked with dish-water and reeked with the smell of spirits which affects the eyes, and is an inevitable adjunct to all dark stairways in St. Petersburg houses--ascending the stairs, Akaky Akakiyevich pondered how much Petrovich would ask, and mentally resolved not to give more than two rubles. The door was open, for the mistress, in cooking some fish, had raised such a smoke in the kitchen that not even the beetles were visible. Akaky Akakiyevich passed through the kitchen unperceived, even by the housewife, and at length reached a room where he beheld Petrovich seated on a large unpainted table, with his legs tucked under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet were bare, after the fashion of tailors as they sit at work; and the first thing which caught the eye was his thumb, with a deformed nail thick and strong as a turtle's shell. About Petrovich's neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay some old garment. He had been trying unsuccessfully for three minutes to thread his needle, and was enraged at the darkness and even at the thread, growling in a low voice, "It won't go through, the barbarian! you pricked me, you rascal!"<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich was vexed at arriving at the precise moment when Petrovich was angry. He liked to order something of Petrovich when he was a little downhearted, or, as his wife expressed it, "when he had settled himself with brandy, the one-eyed devil!" Under such circumstances Petrovich generally came down in his price very readily, and even bowed and returned thanks. Afterwards, to be sure, his wife would come, complaining that her husband had been drunk, and so had fixed the price too low; but, if only a ten-kopek piece were added then the matter would be settled. But now it appeared that Petrovich was in a sober condition, and therefore rough, taciturn, and inclined to demand, Satan only knows what price. Akaky Akakiyevich felt this, and would gladly have beat a retreat, but he was in for it. Petrovich screwed up his one eye very intently at him, and Akaky Akakiyevich involuntarily said, "How do you do, Petrovich?"<br /><br />"I wish you a good morning, sir," said Petrovich squinting at Akaky Akakiyevich's hands, to see what sort of booty he had brought.<br /><br />"Ah! I--to you, Petrovich, this--" It must be known that Akaky Akakiyevich expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever. If the matter was a very difficult one, he had a habit of never completing his sentences, so that frequently, having begun a phrase with the words, "This, in fact, is quite--" he forgot to go on, thinking he had already finished it.<br /><br />"What is it?" asked Petrovich, and with his one eye scanned Akaky Akakiyevich's whole uniform from the collar down to the cuffs, the back, the tails and the button-holes, all of which were well known to him, since they were his own handiwork. Such is the habit of tailors; it is the first thing they do on meeting one.<br /><br />"But I, here, this--Petrovich--a cloak, cloth--here you see, everywhere, in different places, it is quite strong--it is a little dusty and looks old, but it is new, only here in one place it is a little--on the back, and here on one of the shoulders, it is a little worn, yes, here on this shoulder it is a little--do you see? That is all. And a little work--"<br /><br />Petrovich took the cloak, spread it out, to begin with, on the table, looked at it hard, shook his head, reached out his hand to the window-sill for his snuff-box, adorned with the portrait of some general, though what general is unknown, for the place where the face should have been had been rubbed through by the finger and a square bit of paper had been pasted over it. Having taken a pinch of snuff, Petrovich held up the cloak, and inspected it against the light, and again shook his head. Then he turned it, lining upwards, and shook his head once more. After which he again lifted the general-adorned lid with its bit of pasted paper, and having stuffed his nose with snuff, dosed and put away the snuff-box, and said finally, "No, it is impossible to mend it. It is a wretched garment!"<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich's heart sank at these words.<br /><br />"Why is it impossible, Petrovich?" he said, almost in the pleading voice of a child. "All that ails it is, that it is worn on the shoulders. You must have some pieces--"<br /><br />"Yes, patches could be found, patches are easily found," said Petrovich, "but there's nothing to sew them to. The thing is completely rotten. If you put a needle to it--see, it will give way."<br /><br />"Let it give way, and you can put on another patch at once."<br /><br />"But there is nothing to put the patches on to. There's no use in strengthening it. It is too far gone. It's lucky that it's cloth, for, if the wind were to blow, it would fly away."<br /><br />"Well, strengthen it again. How this, in fact--"<br /><br />"No," said Petrovich decisively, "there is nothing to be done with it. It's a thoroughly bad job. You'd better, when the cold winter weather comes on, make yourself some gaiters out of it, because stockings are not warm. The Germans invented them in order to make more money." Petrovich loved on all occasions to have a fling at the Germans. "But it is plain you must have a new cloak."<br /><br />At the word "new" all grew dark before Akaky Akakiyevich's eyes, and everything in the room began to whirl round. The only thing he saw clearly was the general with the paper face on the lid of Petrovich's snuff-box. "A new one?" said he, as if still in a dream. "Why, I have no money for that."<br /><br />"Yes, a new one," said Petrovich, with barbarous composure.<br /><br />"Well, if it came to a new one, how--it--"<br /><br />"You mean how much would it cost?"<br /><br />"Yes."<br /><br />"Well, you would have to lay out a hundred and fifty or more," said Petrovich, and pursed up his lips significantly. He liked to produce powerful effects, liked to stun utterly and suddenly, and then to glance sideways to see what face the stunned person would put on the matter.<br /><br />"A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!" shrieked poor Akaky Akakiyevich, perhaps for the first time in his life, for his voice had always been distinguished for softness.<br /><br />"Yes, sir," said Petrovich, "for any kind of cloak. If you have a marten fur on the collar, or a silk-lined hood, it will mount up to two hundred."<br /><br />"Petrovich, please," said Akaky Akakiyevich in a beseeching tone, not hearing, and not trying to hear, Petrovich's words, and disregarding all his "effects," "some repairs, in order that it may wear yet a little longer."<br /><br />"No, it would only be a waste of time and money," said Petrovich. And Akaky Akakiyevich went away after these words, utterly discouraged. But Petrovich stood for some time after his departure, with significantly compressed lips, and without betaking himself to his work, satisfied that he would not be dropped, and an artistic tailor employed.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich went out into the street as if in a dream. "Such an affair!" he said to himself. "I did not think it had come to--" and then after a pause, he added, "Well, so it is! see what it has come to at last! and I never imagined that it was so!" Then followed a long silence, after which he exclaimed, "Well, so it is! see what already--nothing unexpected that--it would be nothing--what a strange circumstance!" So saying, instead of going home, he went in exactly the opposite direction without suspecting it. On the way, a chimney-sweep bumped up against him, and blackened his shoulder, and a whole hatful of rubbish landed on him from the top of a house which was building. He did not notice it, and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having planted his halberd beside him, was shaking some snuff from his box into his horny hand, did he recover himself a little, and that because the watchman said, "Why are you poking yourself into a man's very face? Haven't you the pavement?" This caused him to look about him, and turn towards home.<br /><br />There only, he finally began to collect his thoughts, and to survey his position in its clear and actual light, and to argue with himself, sensibly and frankly, as with a reasonable friend, with whom one can discuss private and personal matters. "No," said Akaky Akakiyevich, "it is impossible to reason with Petrovich now. He is that--evidently, his wife has been beating him. I'd better go to him on Sunday morning. After Saturday night he will be a little cross-eyed and sleepy, for he will want to get drunk, and his wife won't give him any money, and at such a time, a ten-kopek piece in his hand will--he will become more fit to reason with, and then the cloak and that--" Thus argued Akaky Akakiyevich with himself regained his courage, and waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar that Petrovich's wife had left the house, he went straight to him.<br /><br />Petrovich's eye was indeed very much askew after Saturday. His head drooped, and he was very sleepy; but for all that, as soon as he knew what it was a question of, it seemed as though Satan jogged his memory. "Impossible," said he. "Please to order a new one." Thereupon Akaky Akakiyevich handed over the ten-kopek piece. "Thank you, sir. I will drink your good health," said Petrovich. "But as for the cloak, don't trouble yourself about it; it is good for nothing. I will make you a capital new one, so let us settle about it now."<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich was still for mending it, but Petrovich would not hear of it, and said, "I shall certainly have to make you a new one, and you may depend upon it that I shall do my best. It may even be, as the fashion goes, that the collar can be fastened by silver hooks under a flap."<br /><br />Then Akaky Akakiyevich saw that it was impossible to get along without a new cloak, and his spirit sank utterly. How, in fact, was it to be done? Where was the money to come from? He must have some new trousers, and pay a debt of long standing to the shoemaker for putting new tops to his old boots, and he must order three shirts from the seamstress, and a couple of pieces of linen. In short, all his money must be spent. And even if the director should be so kind as to order him to receive forty-five or even fifty rubles instead of forty, it would be a mere nothing, a mere drop in the ocean towards the funds necessary for a cloak, although he knew that Petrovich was often wrong-headed enough to blurt out some outrageous price, so that even his own wife could not refrain from exclaiming, "Have you lost your senses, you fool?" At one time he would not work at any price, and now it was quite likely that he had named a higher sum than the cloak would cost.<br /><br />But although he knew that Petrovich would undertake to make a cloak for eighty rubles, still, where was he to get the eighty rubles from? He might possibly manage half. Yes, half might be procured, but where was the other half to come from? But the reader must first be told where the first half came from.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich had a habit of putting, for every ruble he spent, a groschen into a small box, fastened with lock and key, and with a slit in the top for the reception of money. At the end of every half-year he counted over the heap of coppers, and changed it for silver. This he had done for a long time, and in the course of years, the sum had mounted up to over forty rubles. Thus he had one half on hand. But where was he to find the other half? Where was he to get another forty rubles from? Akaky Akakiyevich thought and thought, and decided that it would be necessary to curtail his ordinary expenses, for the space of one year at least, to dispense with tea in the evening, to burn no candles, and, if there was anything which he must do, to go into his landlady's room, and work by her light. When he went into the street, he must walk as lightly as he could, and as cautiously, upon the stones, almost upon tiptoe, in order not to wear his heels down in too short a time. He must give the laundress as little to wash as possible; and, in order not to wear out his clothes, he must take them off as soon as he got home, and wear only his cotton dressing-gown, which had been long and carefully saved.<br /><br />To tell the truth, it was a little hard for him at first to accustom himself to these deprivations. But he got used to them at length, after a fashion, and all went smoothly. He even got used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak. From that time forth, his existence seemed to become, in some; way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented to travel along life's path with him, the friend being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a goal. From his face and gait, doubt and indecision, all hesitating and wavering disappeared of themselves. Fire gleamed in his eyes, and occasionally the boldest and most daring ideas flitted through his mind. Why not, for instance, have marten fur on the collar? The thought of this almost made him absent-minded. Once, in copying a letter, he nearly made a mistake, so that he exclaimed almost aloud, "Ugh!" and crossed himself. Once, in the course of every month, he had a conference with Petrovich on the subject of the cloak, where it would be better to buy the cloth, and the colour, and the price. He always returned home satisfied, though troubled, reflecting that the time would come at last when it could all be bought, and then the cloak made.<br /><br />The affair progressed more briskly than he had expected. For beyond all his hopes, the director awarded neither forty nor forty-five rubles for Akaky Akakiyevich's share, but sixty. Whether he suspected that Akaky Akakiyevich needed a cloak, or whether it was merely chance, at all events, twenty extra rubles were by this means provided. This circumstance hastened matters. Two or three months more of hunger and Akaky Akakiyevich had accumulated about eighty rubles. His heart, generally so quiet, began to throb. On the first possible day, he went shopping in company with Petrovich. They bought some very good cloth, and at a reasonable rate too, for they had been considering the matter for six months, and rarely let a month pass without their visiting the shops to enquire prices. Petrovich himself said that no better cloth could be had. For lining, they selected a cotton stuff, but so firm and thick, that Petrovich declared it to be better than silk, and even prettier and more glossy. They did not buy the marten fur, because it was, in fact, dear, but in its stead, they picked out the very best of cat-skin which could be found in the shop, and which might, indeed, be taken for marten at a distance.<br /><br />Petrovich worked at the cloak two whole weeks, for there was a great deal of quilting; otherwise it would have been finished sooner. He charged twelve rubles for the job, it could not possibly have been done for less. It was all sewed with silk, in small, double seams, and Petrovich went over each seam afterwards with his own teeth, stamping in various patterns.<br /><br />It was--it is difficult to say precisely on what day, but probably the most glorious one in Akaky Akakiyevich's life, when Petrovich at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time, for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovich brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akaky; Akakiyevich had never beheld there. He seemed fully sensible that he had done no small deed, and crossed a gulf separating tailors who put in linings, and execute repairs, from those who make new things. He took the cloak out of the pocket-handkerchief in which he had brought it. The handkerchief was fresh from the laundress, and he put it in his pocket for use. Taking out the cloak, he gazed proudly at it, held it up with both hands, and flung it skilfully over the shoulders of Akaky Akakiyevich. Then he pulled it and fitted it down behind with his hand, and he draped it around Akaky Akakiyevich without buttoning it. Akaky Akakiyevich, like an experienced man, wished to try the sleeves. Petrovich helped him on with them, and it turned out that the sleeves were satisfactory also. In short, the cloak appeared to be perfect, and most seasonable. Petrovich did not neglect to observe that it was only because he lived in a narrow street, and had no signboard, and had known Akaky Akakiyevich so long, that he had made it so cheaply; but that if he had been in business on the Nevsky Prospect, he would have charged seventy-five rubles for the making alone. Akaky Akakiyevich did not care to argue this point with Petrovich. He paid him, thanked him, and set out at once in his new cloak for the department. Petrovich followed him, and pausing in the street, gazed long at the cloak in the distance, after which he went to one side expressly to run through a crooked alley, and emerge again into the street beyond to gaze once more upon the cloak from another point, namely, directly in front.<br /><br />Meantime Akaky Akakiyevich went on in holiday mood. He was conscious every second of the time that he had a new cloak on his shoulders, and several times he laughed with internal satisfaction. In fact, there were two advantages, one was its warmth, the other its beauty. He saw nothing of the road, but suddenly found himself at the department. He took off his cloak in the ante-room, looked it over carefully, and confided it to the special care of the attendant. It is impossible to say precisely how it was that every one in the department knew at once that Akaky Akakiyevich had a new cloak, and that the "cape" no longer existed. All rushed at the same moment into the ante-room to inspect it. They congratulated him, and said pleasant things to him, so that he began at first to smile, and then to grow ashamed. When all surrounded him, and said that the new cloak must be "christened," and that he must at least give them all a party, Akaky Akakiyevich lost his head completely, and did not know where he stood, what to answer, or how to get out of it. He stood blushing all over for several minutes, trying to assure them with great simplicity that it was not a new cloak, that it was in fact the old "cape."<br /><br />At length one of the officials, assistant to the head clerk, in order to show that he was not at all proud, and on good terms with his inferiors, said:<br /><br />"So be it, only I will give the party instead of Akaky Akakiyevich; I invite you all to tea with me to-night. It just happens to be my name-day too."<br /><br />The officials naturally at once offered the assistant clerk their congratulations, and accepted the invitation with pleasure. Akaky Akakiyevich would have declined; but all declared that it was discourteous, that it was simply a sin and a shame, and that he could not possibly refuse. Besides, the notion became pleasant to him when he recollected that he should thereby have a chance of wearing his new cloak in the evening also.<br /><br />That whole day was truly a most triumphant festival for Akaky Akakiyevich. He returned home in the most happy frame of mind, took off his cloak, and hung it carefully on the wall, admiring afresh the cloth and the lining. Then he brought out his old, worn-out cloak, for comparison. He looked at it, and laughed, so vast was the difference. And long after dinner he laughed again when the condition of the "cape" recurred to his mind. He dined cheerfully, and after dinner wrote nothing, but took his ease for a while on the bed, until it got dark. Then he dressed himself leisurely, put on his cloak, and stepped out into the street.<br /><br />Where the host lived, unfortunately we cannot say. Our memory begins to fail us badly. The houses and streets in St. Petersburg have become so mixed up in our head that it is very difficult to get anything out of it again in proper form. This much is certain, that the official lived in the best part of the city; and therefore it must have been anything but near to Akaky Akakiyevich's residence. Akaky Akakiyevich was first obliged to traverse a kind of wilderness of deserted, dimly-lighted streets. But in proportion as he approached the official's quarter of the city, the streets became more lively, more populous, and more brilliantly illuminated. Pedestrians began to appear; handsomely dressed ladies were more frequently encountered; the men had otter skin collars to their coats; shabby sleigh-men with their wooden, railed sledges stuck over with brass-headed nails, became rarer; whilst on the other hand, more and more drivers in red velvet caps, lacquered sledges and bear-skin coats began to appear, and carriages with rich hammer-cloths flew swiftly through the streets, their wheels scrunching the snow.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich gazed upon all this as upon a novel sight. He had not been in the streets during the evening for years. He halted out of curiosity before a shop-window, to look at a picture representing a handsome woman, who had thrown off her shoe, thereby baring her whole foot in a very pretty way; whilst behind her the head of a man with whiskers and a handsome moustache peeped through the doorway of another room. Akaky Akakiyevich shook his head, and laughed, and then went on his way. Why did he laugh? Either because he had met with a thing utterly unknown, but for which every one cherishes, nevertheless, some sort of feeling, or else he thought, like many officials, "Well, those French! What is to be said? If they do go in for anything of that sort, why--" But possibly he did not think at all.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich at length reached the house in which the head clerk's assistant lodged. He lived in fine style. The staircase was lit by a lamp, his apartment being on the second floor. On entering the vestibule, Akaky Akakiyevich beheld a whole row of goloshes on the floor. Among them, in the centre of the room, stood a samovar, humming and emitting clouds of steam. On the walls hung all sorts of coats and cloaks, among which there were even some with beaver collars, or velvet facings. Beyond, the buzz of conversation was audible, and became clear and loud, when the servant came out with a trayful of empty glasses, cream-jugs and sugar-bowls. It was evident that the officials had arrived long before, and had already finished their first glass of tea.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich, having hung up his own cloak, entered the inner room. Before him all at once appeared lights, officials, pipes, and card-tables, and he was bewildered by a sound of rapid conversation rising from all the tables, and the noise of moving chairs. He halted very awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering what he ought to do. But they had seen him. They received him with a shout, and all thronged at once into the ante-room, and there took another look at his cloak. Akaky Akakiyevich, although somewhat confused, was frank-hearted, and could not refrain from rejoicing when he saw how they praised his cloak. Then, of course, they all dropped him and his cloak, and returned, as was proper, to the tables set out for whist.<br /><br />All this, the noise, the talk, and the throng of people, was rather overwhelming to Akaky Akakiyevich. He simply did not know where he stood, or where to put his hands, his feet, and his whole body. Finally he sat down by the players, looked at the cards, gazed at the face of one and another, and after a while began to gape, and to feel that it was wearisome, the more so, as the hour was already long past when he usually went to bed. He wanted to take leave of the host, but they would not let him go, saying that he must not fail to drink a glass of champagne, in honour of his new garment. In the course of an hour, supper, consisting of vegetable salad, cold veal, pastry, confectioner's pies, and champagne, was served. They made Akaky Akakiyevich drink two glasses of champagne, after which he felt things grow livelier.<br /><br />Still, he could not forget that it was twelve o'clock, and that he should have been at home long ago. In order that the host might not think of some excuse for detaining him, he stole out of the room quickly, sought out, in the ante-room, his cloak, which, to his sorrow, he found lying on the floor, brushed it, picked off every speck upon it, put it on his shoulders, and descended the stairs to the street.<br /><br />In the street all was still bright. Some petty shops, those permanent clubs of servants and all sorts of folks, were open. Others were shut, but, nevertheless, showed a streak of light the whole length of the door-crack, indicating that they were not yet free of company, and that probably some domestics, male and female, were finishing their stories and conversations, whilst leaving their masters in complete ignorance as to their whereabouts. Akaky Akakiyevich went on in a happy frame of mind. He even started to run, without knowing why, after some lady, who flew past like a flash of lightning. But he stopped short, and went on very quietly as before, wondering why he had quickened his pace. Soon there spread before him these deserted streets which are not cheerful in the daytime, to say no thing of the evening. Now they were even mere dim and lonely. The lanterns began to grow rarer, oil, evidently, had been less liberally supplied. Then came wooden houses and fences. Not a soul anywhere; only the snow sparkled in the streets, and mournfully veiled the low-roofed cabins with their dosed shutters. He approached the spot where the street crossed a vast square with houses barely visible on its farther side, a square which seemed a fearful desert.<br /><br />Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from some watchman's-box, which seemed to stand en the edge of the world. Ahaky Akakiyevich's cheerfulness diminished at this point in a marked degree. He entered the square, not without an involuntary sensation of fear, as though his heart warned him of some evil. He glanced back, and on both sides it was like a sea about him. "No, it is better not to look," he thought, and went on, closing his eyes. When he opened them, to see whether he was near the end of the square, he suddenly beheld, standing just before his very nose, some bearded individuals of precisely what sort, he could not make out. All grew dark before his eyes, and his heart throbbed.<br /><br />"Of course, the cloak is mine!" said one of them in a loud voice, seizing hold of his collar. Akaky Akakiyevich was about to shout "Help!" when the second man thrust a fist, about the size of an official's head, at his very mouth, muttering, "Just you dare to scream!"<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich felt them strip off his cloak, and give him a kick. He fell headlong upon the snow, and felt no more.<br /><br />In a few minutes he recovered consciousness, and rose to his feet, but no one was there. He felt that it was cold in the square, and that his cloak was gone. He began to shout, but his voice did not appear to reach the outskirts of the square. In despair, but without ceasing to shout, he started at a run across the square, straight towards the watch-box, beside which stood the watchman, leaning on his halberd, and apparently curious to know what kind of a customer was running towards him shouting. Akaky Akakiyevich ran up to him, and began in a sobbing voice to shout that he was asleep, and attended to nothing, and did not see when a man was robbed. The watchman replied that he had seen two men stop him in the middle of the square, but supposed that they were friends of his, and that, instead of scolding vainly, he had better go to the police on the morrow, so that they might make a search for whoever had stolen the cloak.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich ran home and arrived in a state of complete disorder, his hair which grew very thinly upon his temples and the back of his head all tousled, his body, arms and legs, covered with snow. The old woman, who was mistress of his lodgings, on hearing a terrible knocking, sprang hastily from her bed, and, with only one shoe on, ran to open the door, pressing the sleeve of her chemise to her bosom out of modesty. But when she had opened it, she fell back on beholding Akaky Akakiyevich in such a condition. When he told her about the affair, she clasped her hands, and said that he must go straight to the district chief of police, for his subordinate would turn up his nose, promise well, and drop the matter there. The very best thing to do, therefore, would be to go to the district chief, whom she knew, because Finnish Anna, her former cook, was now nurse at his house. She often saw him passing the house, and he was at church every Sunday, praying, but at the same time gazing cheerfully at everybody; so that he must be a good man, judging from all appearances. Having listened to this opinion, Akaky Akakiyevich betook himself sadly to his room. And how he spent the night there, any one who can put himself in another's place may readily imagine.<br /><br />Early in the morning, he presented himself at the district chief's, but was told the official was asleep. He went again at ten and was again informed that he was asleep. At eleven, and they said, "The superintendent is not at home." At dinner time, and the clerks in the ante-room would not admit him on any terms, and insisted upon knowing his business. So that at last, for once in his life, Akaky Akakiyevich felt an inclination to show some spirit, and said curtly that he must see the chief in person, that they ought not to presume to refuse him entrance, that he came from the department of justice, and that when he complained of them, they would see.<br /><br />The clerks dared make no reply to this, and one of them went to call the chief, who listened to the strange story of the theft of the coat. Instead of directing his attention to the principal points of the matter, he began to question Akaky Akakiyevich. Why was he going home so late? Was he in the habit of doing so, or had he been to some disorderly house? So that Akaky Akakiyevich got thoroughly confused, and left him, without knowing whether the affair of his cloak was in proper train or not.<br /><br />All that day, for the first time in his life, he never went near the department. The next day he made his appearance, very pale, and in his old cape, which had become even more shabby. The news of the robbery of the cloak touched many, although there were some officials present who never lost an opportunity, even such a one as the present, of ridiculing Akaky Akakiyevich. They decided to make a collection for him on the spot, but the officials had already spent a great deal in subscribing for the director's portrait, and for some book, at the suggestion of the head of that division, who was a friend of the author; and so the sum was trifling.<br /><br />One of them, moved by pity, resolved to help Akaky Akakiyevich with some good advice, at least, and told him that he ought not to go to the police, for although it might happen that a police-officer, wishing to win the approval of his superiors, might hunt up the cloak by some means, still, his cloak would remain in the possession of the police if he did not offer legal proof that it belonged to him. The best thing for him, therefore, would be to apply to a certain prominent personage; since this prominent personage, by entering into relation with the proper persons, could greatly expedite the matter.<br /><br />As there was nothing else to be done, Akaky Akakiyevich decided to go to the prominent personage. What was the exact official position of the prominent personage, remains unknown to this day. The reader must know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person. Moreover, his present position was not considered prominent in comparison with others still more so. But there is always a circle of people to whom what is insignificant in the eyes of others, is important enough. Moreover, he strove to increase his importance by sundry devices. For instance, he managed to have the inferior officials meet him on the staircase when he entered upon his service; no one was to presume to come directly to him, but the strictest etiquette must be observed; the collegiate recorder must make a report to the government secretary, the government secretary to the titular councillor, or whatever other man was proper, and all business must come before him in this manner. In Holy Russia, all is thus contaminated with the love of imitation; every man imitates and copies his superior. They even say that a certain titular councillor, when promoted to the head of some small separate office, immediately partitioned off a private room for himself, called it the audience chamber, and posted at the door a lackey with red collar and braid, who grasped the handle of the door, and opened to all comers, though the audience chamber would hardly hold an ordinary writing table.<br /><br />The manners and customs of the prominent personage were grand and imposing, but rather exaggerated. The main foundation of his system was strictness. "Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!" he generally said; and at the last word he looked significantly into the face of the person to whom he spoke. But there was no necessity for this, for the halfscore of subordinates, who formed the entire force of the office, were properly afraid. On catching sight of him afar off, they left their work, and waited, drawn up in line, until he had passed through the room. His ordinary converse with his inferiors smacked of sternness, and consisted chiefly of three phrases: "How dare you?" "Do you know whom you are speaking to?" "Do you realise who is standing before you?"<br /><br />Otherwise he was a very kind-hearted man, good to his comrades, and ready to oblige. But the rank of general threw him completely off his balance. On receiving any one of that rank, he became confused, lost his way, as it were, and never knew what to do. If he chanced to be amongst his equals, he was still a very nice kind of man, a very good fellow in many respects, and not stupid, but the very moment that he found himself in the society of people but one rank lower than himself, he became silent. And his situation aroused sympathy, the more so, as he felt himself that he might have been making an incomparably better use of his time. In his eyes, there was sometimes visible a desire to join some interesting conversation or group, but he was kept back by the thought, "Would it not be a very great condescension on his part? Would it not be familiar? And would he not thereby lose his importance?" And in consequence of such reflections, he always remained in the same dumb state, uttering from time to time a few monosyllabic sounds, and thereby earning the name of the most wearisome of men.<br /><br />To this prominent personage Akaky Akakiyevich presented himself, and this at the most unfavourable time for himself, though opportune for the prominent personage. The prominent personage was in his cabinet, conversing very gaily with an old acquaintance and companion of his childhood, whom he had not seen for several years, and who had just arrived, when it was announced to him that a person named Bashmachkin had come. He asked abruptly, "Who is he?"--"Some official," he was informed. "Ah, he can wait! This is no time for him to call," said the important man.<br /><br />It must be remarked here that the important man lied outrageously. He had said all he had to say to his friend long before, and the conversation had been interspersed for some time with very long pauses, during which they merely slapped each other on the leg, and said, "You think so, Ivan Abramovich!" "Just so, Stepan Varlamovich!" Nevertheless, he ordered that the official should be kept waiting, in order to show his friend, a man who had not been in the service for a long time, but had lived at home in the country, how long officials had to wait in his ante-room.<br /><br />At length, having talked himself completely out, and more than that, having had his fill of pauses, and smoked a cigar in a very comfortable arm-chair with reclining back, he suddenly seemed to recollect, and said to the secretary, who stood by the door with papers of reports, "So it seems that there is an official waiting to see me. Tell him that he may come in." On perceiving Akaky Akakiyevich's modest mien and his worn uniform, he turned abruptly to him, and said, "What do you want?" in a curt hard voice, which he had practised in his room in private, and before the looking-glass, for a whole week before being raised to his present rank.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich, who was already imbued with a due amount of fear, became somewhat confused, and as well as his tongue would permit, explained, with a rather more frequent addition than usual of the word "that" that his cloak was quite new, and had been stolen in the most inhuman manner; that he had applied to him, in order that he might, in some way, by his intermediation--that he might enter into correspondence with the chief of police, and find the cloak.<br /><br />For some inexplicable reason, this conduct seemed familiar to the prominent personage.<br /><br />"What, my dear sir!" he said abruptly, "are you not acquainted with etiquette? To whom have you come? Don't you know how such matters are managed? You should first have presented a petition to the office. It would have gone to the head of the department, then to the chief of the division, then it would have been handed over to the secretary, and the secretary would have given it to me."<br /><br />"But, your excellency," said Akaky Akakiyevich, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, "I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries--are an untrustworthy race."<br /><br />"What, what, what!" said the important personage. "Where did you get such courage? Where did you get such ideas? What impudence towards their chiefs and superiors has spread among the young generation!" The prominent personage apparently had not observed that Akaky Akakiyevich was already in the neighbourhood of fifty. If he could be called a young man, it must have been in comparison with some one who was seventy. "Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realise who is standing before you? Do you realise it? Do you realise it, I ask you!" Then he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakiyevich.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich's senses failed him. He staggered, trembled in every limb, and, if the porters had not run in to support him, would have fallen to the floor. They carried him out insensible. But the prominent personage, gratified that the effect should have surpassed his expectations, and quite intoxicated with the thought that his word could even deprive a man of his senses, glanced sideways at his friend in order to see how he looked upon this, and perceived, not without satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uneasy frame of mind, and even beginning on his part, to feel a trifle frightened.<br /><br />Akaky Akakiyevich could not remember how he descended the stairs, and got into the street. He felt neither his hands nor feet. Never in his life had he been so rated by any high official, let alone a strange one. He went staggering on through the snow-storm, which was blowing in the streets, with his mouth wide open. The wind, in St. Petersburg fashion, darted upon him from all quarters, and down every cross-street. In a twinkling it had blown a quinsy into his throat, and he reached home unable to utter a word. His throat was swollen, and he lay down on his bed. So powerful is sometimes a good scolding!<br /><br />The next day a violent fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the malady progressed more rapidly than could have been expected, and when the doctor arrived, he found, on feeling the sick man's pulse, that there was nothing to be done, except to prescribe a poultice, so that the patient might not be left entirely without the beneficent aid of medicine. But at the same time, he predicted his end in thirty-six hours. After this he turned to the landlady, and said, "And as for you, don't waste your time on him. Order his pine coffin now, for an oak one will be too expensive for him."<br /><br />Did Akaky Akakiyevich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them, did they produce any overwhelming effect upon him? Did he lament the bitterness of his life?--We know not, for he continued in a delirious condition. Visions incessantly appeared to him, each stranger than the other. Now he saw Petrovich, and ordered him to make a cloak, with some traps for robbers, who seemed to him to be always under the bed; and he cried every moment to the landlady to pull one of them from under his coverlet. Then he inquired why his old mantle hung before him when he had a new cloak. Next he fancied that he was standing before the prominent person, listening to a thorough setting-down and saying, "Forgive me, your excellency!" but at last he began to curse, uttering the most horrible words, so that his aged landlady crossed herself, never in her life having heard anything of the kind from him, and more so as these words followed directly after the words "your excellency." Later on he talked utter nonsense, of which nothing could be made, all that was evident being that these incoherent words and thoughts hovered ever about one thing, his cloak.<br /><br />At length poor Akaky Akakiyevich breathed his last. They sealed up neither his room nor his effects, because, in the first place, there were no heirs, and, in the second, there was very little to inherit beyond a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three buttons which had burst off his trousers, and the mantle already known to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows. I confess that the person who told me this tale took no interest in the matter. They carried Akaky Akakiyevich out, and buried him.<br /><br />And St. Petersburg was left without Akaky Akakiyevich, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted to himself the attention of those students of human nature who omit no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly and examining it under the microscope. A being who bore meekly the jibes of the department, and went to his grave without having done one unusual deed, but to whom, nevertheless, at the close of his life, appeared a bright visitant in the form of a cloak, which momentarily cheered his poor life, and upon him, thereafter, an intolerable misfortune descended, just as it descends upon the heads of the mighty of this world!<br /><br />Several days after his death, the porter was sent from the department to his lodgings, with an order for him to present himself there immediately, the chief commanding it. But the porter had to return unsuccessful, with the answer that he could not come; and to the question, "Why?" replied, "Well, because he is dead! he was buried four days ago." In this manner did they hear of Akaky Akakiyevich's death at the department. And the next day a new official sat in his place, with a handwriting by no means so upright, but more inclined and slanting.<br /><br />But who could have imagined that this was not really the end of Akaky Akakiyevich, that he was destined to raise a commotion after death, as if in compensation for his utterly insignificant life? But so it happened, and our poor story unexpectedly gains a fantastic ending.<br /><br />A rumour suddenly spread through St. Petersburg, that a dead man had taken to appearing on the Kalinkin Bridge, and its vicinity, at night in the form of an official seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under the pretext of its being the stolen cloak, he dragged, without regard to rank or calling, every one's cloak from his shoulders, be it cat-skin, beaver, fox, bear, sable, in a word, every sort of fur and skin which men adopted for their covering. One of the department officials saw the dead man with his own eyes, and immediately recognised in him Akaky Akakiyevich. This, however, inspired him with such terror, that he ran off with all his might, and therefore did not scan the dead man closely, but only saw how the latter threatened him from afar with his finger. Constant complaints poured in from all quarters, that the backs and shoulders, not only of titular but even of court councillors, were exposed to the danger of a cold, on account of the frequent dragging off of their cloaks.<br /><br />Arrangements were made by the police to catch the corpse, alive or dead, at any cost, and punish him as an example to others, in the most severe manner. In this they nearly succeeded, for a watchman, on guard in Kirinshkin Lane, caught the corpse by the collar on the very scene of his evil deeds, when attempting to pull off the frieze cloak of a retired musician. Having seized him by the collar, he summoned, with a shout, two of his comrades, whom he enjoined to hold him fast, while he himself felt for a moment in his boot, in order to draw out his snuff-box, and refresh his frozen nose. But the snuff was of a sort which even a corpse could not endure. The watchman having closed his right nostril with his finger, had no sooner succeeded in holding half a handful up to the left, than the corpse sneezed so violently that he completely filled the eyes of all three. While they raised their hands to wipe them, the dead man vanished completely, so that they positively did not know whether they had actually had him in their grip at all. Thereafter the watchmen conceived such a terror of dead men that they were afraid even to seize the living, and only screamed from a distance. "Hey, there! go your way!" So the dead official began to appear even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, causing no little terror to all timid people.<br /><br />But we have totally neglected that certain prominent personage who may really be considered as the cause of the fantastic turn taken by this true history. First of all, justice compels us to say, that after the departure of poor, annihilated Akaky Akakiyevich, he felt something like remorse. Suffering was unpleasant to him, for his heart was accessible to many good impulses, in spite of the fact that his rank often prevented his showing his true self. As soon as his friend had left his cabinet, he began to think about poor Akaky Akakiyevich. And from that day forth, poor Akaky Akakiyevich, who could not bear up under an official reprimand, recurred to his mind almost every day. The thought troubled him to such an extent, that a week later he even resolved to send an official to him, to learn whether he really could assist him. And when it was reported to him that Akaky Akakiyevich had died suddenly of fever, he was startled, hearkened to the reproaches of his conscience, and was out of sorts for the whole day.<br /><br />Wishing to divert his mind in some way and drive away the disagreeable impression, he set out that evening for one of his friends' houses, where he found quite a large party assembled. What was better, nearly every one was of the same rank as himself, so that he need not feel in the least constrained. This had a marvellous effect upon his mental state. He grew expansive, made himself agreeable in conversation, in short, he passed a delightful evening After supper he drank a couple of glasses of champagne--not a bad recipe for cheerfulness, as every one knows. The champagne inclined him to various adventures, and he determined not to return home, but to go and see a certain well-known lady, of German extraction, Karolina Ivanovna, a lady, it appears, with whom he was on a very friendly footing.<br /><br />It must be mentioned that the prominent personage was no longer a young man, but a good husband and respected father of a family. Two sons, one of whom was already in the service, and a good-looking, sixteen-year-old daughter, with a slightly arched but pretty little nose, came every morning to kiss his hand and say, "_Bon jour_, papa." His wife, a still fresh and good-looking woman, first gave him her hand to kiss, and then, reversing the procedure, kissed his. But the prominent personage, though perfectly satisfied in his domestic relations, considered it stylish to have a friend in another quarter of the city. This friend was scarcely prettier or younger than his wife; but there are such puzzles in the world, and it is not our place to judge them. So the important personage descended the stairs, stepped into his sledge, said to the coachman, "To Karolina Ivanovna's," and, wrapping himself luxuriously in his warm cloak, found himself in that delightful frame of mind than which a Russian can conceive nothing better, namely, when you think of nothing yourself, yet when the thoughts creep into your mind of their own accord, each more agreeable than the other, giving you no trouble either to drive them away, or seek them. Fully satisfied, he recalled all the gay features of the evening just passed and all the mots which had made the little circle laugh. Many of them he repeated in a low voice, and found them quite as funny as before; so it is not surprising that he should laugh heartily at them. Occasionally, however, he was interrupted by gusts of wind, which, coming suddenly, God knows whence or why, cut his face, drove masses of snow into it, filled out his cloak-collar like a sail, or suddenly blew it over his head with supernatural force, and thus caused him constant trouble to disentangle himself.<br /><br />Suddenly the important personage felt some one clutch him firmly by the collar. Turning round, he perceived a man of short stature, in an old, worn uniform, and recognised, not without terror, Akaky Akakiyevich. The official's face was white as snow, and looked just like a corpse's. But the horror of the important personage transcended all bounds when he saw the dead man's mouth open, and heard it utter the following remarks, while it breathed upon him the terrible odour of the grave: "Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that--by the collar! I need your cloak. You took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me. So now give up your own."<br /><br />The pallid prominent personage almost died of fright. Brave as he was in the office and in the presence of inferiors generally, and although, at the sight of his manly form and appearance, every one said, "Ugh! how much character he has!" at this crisis, he, like many possessed of an heroic exterior, experienced such terror, that, not without cause, he began to fear an attack of illness. He flung his cloak hastily from his shoulders and shouted to his coachman in an unnatural voice, "Home at full speed!" The coachman, hearing the tone which is generally employed at critical moments, and even accompanied by something much more tangible, drew his head down between his shoulders in case of an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on like an arrow. In a little more than six minutes the prominent personage was at the entrance of his own house. Pale, thoroughly scared, and cloakless, he went home instead of to Karolina Ivanovna's, reached his room somehow or other, and passed the night in the direst distress; so that the next morning over their tea, his daughter said, "You are very pale to-day, papa." But papa remained silent, and said not a word to any one of what had happened to him, where he had been, or where he had intended to go.<br /><br />This occurrence made a deep impression upon him. He even began to say, "How dare you? Do you realise who is standing before you?" less frequently to the under-officials, and, if he did utter the words, it was only after first having learned the bearings of the matter. But the most noteworthy point was, that from that day forward the apparition of the dead official ceased to be seen. Evidently the prominent personage's cloak just fitted his shoulders. At all events, no more instances of his dragging cloaks from people's shoulders were heard of. But many active and solicitous persons could by no means reassure themselves, and asserted that the dead official still showed himself in distant parts of the city.<br /><br />In fact, one watchman in Kolomen saw with his own eyes the apparition come from behind a house. But the watchman was not a strong man, so he was afraid to arrest him, and followed him in the dark, until, at length, the apparition looked round, paused, and inquired, "What do you want?" at the same time showing such a fist as is never seen on living men. The watchman said, "Nothing," and turned back instantly. But the apparition was much too tall, wore huge moustaches, and, directing its steps apparently towards the Obukhov Bridge, disappeared in the darkness of the night.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-51159387355346399012009-03-04T08:09:00.000-08:002009-03-04T08:28:04.721-08:00The Bloody Chamber<span style="font-weight: bold;">By : Angela Carter</span><br /><br /> I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother's apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage.<br /> And I remember I tenderly imagined how, at this very moment, my mother would be moving slowly about the narrow bedroom I had left behind for ever, folding up and putting away all my little relics, the tumbled garments I would not need any more, the scores for which there had been no room in my trunks, the concert programmes I'd abandoned; she would linger over this torn ribbon and that faded photograph with all the half-joyous, half-sorrowful emotions of a woman on her daughter's wedding day. And, in the midst of my bridal triumph, I felt a pang of loss as if, when he put the gold band on my finger, I had, in some way, ceased to be her child in becoming his wife.<br /> Are you sure, she'd said when they delivered the gigantic box that held the wedding dress he'd bought me, wrapped up in tissue paper and red ribbon like a Christmas gift of crystallised fruit. Are you sure you love him? There was a dress for her, too; black silk, with the dull, prismatic sheen of oil on water, finer than anything she'd worn since the adventurous girlhood in Indo-China, daughter of a rich tea planter. My eagle-featured indomitable mother; what other student at the Conservatoire could boast that her mother had outfaced a junkful of Chinese pirates; nursed a village through a visitation of the plague, shot a man-eating tiger with her own hand and all before she was as old as I?<br /> "Are you sure you love him?"<br /> "I'm sure I want to marry him," I said.<br /> And would say no more. She sighed, as if it was with reluctance that she might at last banish the spectre of poverty from its habitual place at our meagre table. For my mother herself had gladly, scandalously, defiantly beggared herself for love; and, one fine day, her gallant soldier never returned from the wars, leaving his wife and child a legacy of tears that never quite dried, a cigar box full of medals and the antique service revolver that my mother, grown magnificently eccentric in hardship, kept always in her reticule, in case -- how I teased her -- she was surprised by footpads on her way home from the grocer's shop.<br /> Now and then a starburst of lights spattered the drawn blinds as if the railway company had lit up all the stations through which we passed in celebration of the bride. My satin nightdress had just been shaken from its wrappings; it had slipped over my young girl's pointed breasts and shoulders, supple as a garment of heavy water, and now teasingly caressed me, egregious, insinuating, nudging between my thighs as I shifted restlessly in my narrow berth. His kiss, his kiss with tongue and teeth in it and a rasp of beard had hinted to me, though with the same exquisite tact as this nightdress he'd given me, of the wedding night, which would be voluptuously deferred until we lay in his great ancestral bed in the sea-girt, pinnacled domain that lay, still, beyond the grasp of my imagination. . . that magic place, the fairy castle whose walls were made of foam, that legendary habitation in which he had been born. To which, one day, I might bear an heir. Our destination, my destiny.<br /> Above the syncopated roar of the train, I could hear his even, steady breathing. Only the communicating door kept me from my husband and it stood open. If I rose up on my elbow, I could see the dark, leonine shape of his head and my nostrils caught a whiff of the opulent male scent of leather and spices that always accompanied him and sometimes during his courtship, had been the only hint he gave me that he had come into my mother's sitting-room, for, though he was a big man, he moved as softly as if all his shoes had soles of velvet, as if his footfall turned the carpet into snow.<br /> He had loved to surprise me in my abstracted solitude at the piano. He would tell them not to announce him, then soundlessly open the door and softly creep up behind me with his bouquet of hot-house flowers or his box of marrons glaces, lay his offering upon the keys and clasp his hands over my eyes as I was lost in a Debussy prelude. But the perfume of spiced leather always betrayed him; after my first shock, I was forced always to mimic surprise, so that he would not be disappointed.<br /> He was older than I. He was much older than I; there were streaks of pure silver in his dark mane. But his strange, heavy, almost waxen face was not lined by experience. Rather, experience seemed to have washed it perfectly smooth, like a stone on a beach whose fissures had been eroded by successive tides. And sometimes that face, in stillness when he listened to me playing, with the heavy eyelids folded over eyes that always disturbed me by their absolute absence of light, seemed to me like a mask, as if his real face, the face that truly reflected all the life he had led in the world before he met me, before, even, I was born, as though that face lay underneath this mask. Or else, elsewhere. As though he had laid by the face in which he had lived for so long in order to offer my youth a face unsigned by the years.<br /> And, elsewhere, I might see him plain. Elsewhere. But, where?<br /> In, perhaps, that castle to which the train now took us, that marvellous castle in which he had been born.<br /> Even when he asked me to marry him, and I said: "Yes", still he did not lose that heavy, fleshy composure of his. I know it must seem a curious analogy, a man with a flower, but sometimes he seemed to me like a lily. Yes. A lily. Possessed of that strange, ominous calm of a sentient vegetable, like one of those cobra-headed, funereal lilies whose white sheaths are curled out of a flesh as thick and tensely yielding to the touch as vellum. When I said that I would marry him, not one muscle in his face stirred, but he let out a long, extinguished sigh. I thought: Oh! how he must want me! and it was as though the imponderable weight of his desire was a force I might not withstand, not by virtue of its violence but because of its very gravity.<br /> He had the ring ready in a leather box lined with crimson velvet, a fire opal the size of a pigeon's egg set in a complicated circle of dark antique gold. My old nurse, who still lived with my mother and me, squinted at the ring askance: opals are bad luck, she said. But this opal had been his own mother's ring, and his grandmother's, and her mother's before that, given to an ancestor by Catherine de Medici. . . every bride that came to the castle wore it, time out of mind. And did he give it to his other wives and have it back from them? asked the old woman rudely; yet she was a snob. She hid her incredulous joy at my marital coup -- her little Marquise -- behind a façade of fault-finding. But, here, she touched me. I shrugged and turned my back pettishly on her. I did not want to be reminded how he had loved other women before me, but the knowledge often teased me in the threadbare self-confidence of the small hours.<br /> I was seventeen and knew nothing of the world; my Marquis had been married before, more than once, and I remained a little bemused that, after those others, he should now have chosen me. Indeed was he not still in mourning for his last wife? Tsk, tsk, went my old nurse. And even my mother had been reluctant to see her girl whisked off by a man so recently bereaved. A Romanian countess, a lady of high fashion. Dead just three short months before I met him, a boating accident, at his home, in Brittany. They never found her body but I rummaged through the back copies of the society magazines my old nanny kept in a trunk under her bed and tracked down her photograph. The sharp muzzle of a pretty, witty, naughty monkey; such potent and bizarre charm, of a dark, bright, wild yet worldly thing whose natural habitat must have been some luxurious interior decorator's jungle filled with potted palms and tame, squawking parakeets.<br /> Before that? Her face is common property; everyone painted her but the Redon engraving I liked best, The Evening Star Walking on the Rim of Night. To see her skeletal, enigmatic grace, you would never think she had been a barmaid in a café in Montmartre until Puvis de Chavannes saw her and had her expose her flat breasts and elongated thighs to his brush. And yet it was the absinthe doomed her, or so they said.<br /> The first of all his ladies? That sumptuous diva; I had heard her sing Isolde, precociously musical child that I was, taken to the opera for a birthday treat. My first opera; I had heard her sing Isolde. With what white-hot passion had she burned from the stage! So that you could tell she would die young. We sat high up, halfway to heaven in the gods, yet she half-blinded me. And my father, still alive (oh, so long ago), took hold of my sticky little hand, to comfort me, in the last act, yet all I heard was the glory of her voice.<br /> Married three times within my own brief lifetime to three different graces, now, as if to demonstrate the eclecticism of his taste, he had invited me to join this gallery of beautiful women, I, the poor widow's child with my mouse-coloured hair that still bore the kinks of the plaits from which it had so recently been freed, my bony hips, my nervous, pianist's fingers.<br /> He was rich as Croesus. The night before our wedding -- a simple affair, at the Mairie, because his countess was so recently gone -- he took my mother and me, curious coincidence, to see Tristan. And, do you know, my heart swelled and ached so during the Liebestod that I thought I must truly love him. Yes. I did. On his arm, all eyes were upon me. The whispering crowd in the foyer parted like the Red Sea to let us through. My skin crisped at his touch.<br /> How my circumstances had changed since the first time I heard those voluptuous chords that carry such a charge of deathly passion in them! Now, we sat in a loge, in red velvet armchairs, and a braided bewigged flunkey brought us a silver bucket of iced champagne in the interval. The froth spilled over the rim of my glass and drenched my hands, I thought: My cup runneth over. And I had on a Poiret dress. He had prevailed upon my reluctant mother to let him buy my trousseau; what would I have gone to him in, otherwise? Twice-darned underwear, faded gingham, serge skirts, hand-me-downs. So, for the opera, I wore a sinuous shift of white muslin tied with a silk string under the breasts. And everyone stared at me. And at his wedding gift.<br /> His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat. After the Terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who'd escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound. And his grandmother, taken with the notion, had her ribbon made up in rubies; such a gesture of luxurious defiance! That night at the opera comes back to me even now. . . the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood.<br /> I saw him watching me in the gilded mirrors with the assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh, or even of a housewife in the market, inspecting cuts on the slab. I'd never seen, or else had never acknowledged, that regard of his before, the sheer carnal avarice of it; and it was strangely magnified by the monocle lodged in his left eye. When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.<br /> The next day, we were married.<br /> <br />The train slowed, shuddered to a halt. Lights; clank of metal; a voice declaring the name of an unknown, never-to-be-visited station; silence of the night; the rhythm of his breathing, that I should sleep with, now, for the rest of my life. And I could not sleep. I stealthily sat up, raised the blind a little and huddled against the cold window that misted over with the warmth of my breathing, gazing out at the dark platform towards those rectangles of domestic lamp light that promised warmth, company, a supper of sausages hissing in a pan on the stove for the station master, his children tucked up in bed asleep in the brick house with the painted shutters. . . all the paraphernalia of the everyday world from which I, with my stunning marriage, had exiled myself.<br /> Into marriage, into exile; I sensed it, I knew it -- that, henceforth, I would always be lonely. Yet that was part of the already familiar weight of the fire opal that glimmered like a gypsy's magic ball, so that I could not take my eyes off it when I played the piano. This ring, the bloody bandage of rubies, the wardrobe of clothes from Poiret and Worth, his scent of Russian leather -- all had conspired to seduce me so utterly that I could not say I felt one single twinge of regret for the world of tartines and maman that now receded from me as if drawn away on a string, like a child's toy, as the train began to throb again as if in delighted anticipation of the distance it would take me.<br /> The first grey streamers of the dawn now flew in the sky and an eldritch half-light seeped into the railway carriage. I heard no change in his breathing but my heightened excited senses told me he was awake and gazing at me. A huge man, an enormous man, and his eyes, dark and motionless as those eyes the ancient Egyptians painted upon their sarcophagi, fixed upon me. I felt a certain tension in the pit of my stomach, to be so watched in such silence. A match struck. He was igniting a Romeo y Julieta fat as a baby's arm.<br /> "Soon," he said in his resonant voice that was like the tolling of a bell and I felt, all at once, a sharp premonition of dread that lasted only as long as the match flared and I could see his white, broad face as if it were hovering, disembodied, above the sheets, illuminated from below like a grotesque carnival head. Then the flame died, the cigar glowed and filled the compartment with a remembered fragrance that made me think of my father, how he would hug me in a warm fug of Havana, when I was a little girl, before he kissed me and left me and died.<br /> As soon as my husband handed me down from the high step of the train, I smelled the amniotic salinity of the ocean. It was November; the trees, stunted by the Atlantic gales, were bare and the lonely halt was deserted but for his leather-gaitered chauffeur waiting meekly beside the sleek black motor car. It was cold; I drew my furs about me, a wrap of white and black, broad stripes of ermine and sable, with a collar from which my head rose like the calyx of a wildflower. (I swear to you, I had never been vain until I met him.) The bell clanged; the straining train leapt its leash and left us at that lonely wayside halt where only he and I had descended. Oh, the wonder of it; how all that might of iron and steam had paused only to suit his convenience. The richest man in France.<br /> "Madame."<br /> The chauffeur eyed me; was he comparing me, invidiously, to the countess, the artist's model, the opera singer? I hid behind my furs as if they were a system of soft shields. My husband liked me to wear my opal over my kid glove, a showy, theatrical trick -- but the moment the ironic chauffeur glimpsed its simmering flash he smiled, as though it was proof positive I was his master's wife. And we drove towards the widening dawn, that now streaked half the sky with a wintry bouquet of pink of roses, orange of tiger-lilies, as if my husband had ordered me a sky from the florist. The day broke around me like a cool dream.<br /> Sea; sand; a sky that melts into the sea -- a landscape of misty pastels with a look about it of being continuously on the point of melting. A landscape with all the deliquescent harmonies of Debussy, of the etudes I played for him, the reverie I'd been playing that afternoon in the salon of the princess where I'd first met him, among the tea-cups and the little cakes, I, the orphan, hired out of charity to give them their digestive of music.<br /> And, ah! his castle. The faery solitude of the place; with its turrets of misty blue, its courtyard, its spiked gate, his castle that lay on the very bosom of the sea with seabirds mewing about its attics, the casements opening on to the green and purple, evanescent departures of the ocean, cut off by the tide from land for half a day. . . that castle, at home neither on the land nor on the water, a mysterious, amphibious place, contravening the materiality of both earth and the waves, with the melancholy of a mermaiden who perches on her rock and waits, endlessly, for a lover who had drowned far away, long ago. That lovely, sad, sea-siren of a place!<br /> The tide was low; at this hour, so early in the morning, the causeway rose up out of the sea. As the car turned on to the wet cobbles between the slow margins of water, he reached out for my hand that had his sultry, witching ring on it, pressed my fingers, kissed my palm with extraordinary tenderness. His face was as still as ever I'd seen it, still as a pond iced thickly over, yet his lips, that always looked so strangely red and naked between the black fringes of his beard, now curved a little. He smiled; he welcomed his bride home.<br /> No room, no corridor that did not rustle with the sound of the sea and all the ceilings, the walls on which his ancestors in the stern regalia of rank lined up with their dark eyes and white faces, were stippled with refracted light from the waves which were always in motion; that luminous murmurous castle of which I was the chatelaine, I, the little music student whose mother had sold all her jewellery, even her wedding ring, to pay the fees at the Conservatoire.<br /> First of all, there was the small ordeal of my initial interview with the housekeeper, who kept this extraordinary machine, this anchored, castellated ocean liner, in smooth running order no matter who stood on the bridge; how tenuous, I thought, might be my authority here! She had a bland, pale, impassive, dislikeable face beneath the impeccably starched white linen headdress of the region. Her greeting, correct but lifeless, chilled me; daydreaming, I dared presume too much on my status. . . briefly wondered how I might install my old nurse, so much loved, however cosily incompetent, in her place. Ill-considered schemings! He told me this one had been his foster mother; was bound to his family in the utmost feudal complicity, "as much a part of the house as I am, my dear." Now her thin lips offered me a proud little smile. She would be my ally as long as I was his. And with that, I must be content.<br /> But, here it would be easy to be content. In the turret suite he had given me for my very own, I could gaze out over the tumultuous Atlantic and imagine myself the Queen of the Sea. There was a Bechstein for me in the music room and, on the wall, another wedding present -- an early Flemish primitive of Saint Cecilia at her celestial organ. In the prim charm of this saint, with her plump, sallow cheeks and crinkled brown hair, I saw myself as I could have wished to be. I warmed to a loving sensitivity I had not hitherto suspected in him. Then he led me up a delicate spiral staircase to my bedroom; before she discreetly vanished, the housekeeper set him chuckling with some, I dare say, lewd blessing for newlyweds in her native Breton. That I did not understand. That he, smiling, refused to interpret.<br /> And there lay the grand, hereditary matrimonial bed, itself the size, almost, of my little room at home, with the gargoyles carved on its surfaces of ebony, vermilion lacquer, gold leaf; and its white gauze curtains, billowing in the sea breeze. Our bed. And surrounded by so many mirrors! Mirrors on the walls, in stately frames of contorted gold, that reflected more white lilies than I'd ever seen in my life before. He'd filled the room with them, to greet the bride, the young bride. The young bride, who had become that multitude of girls I saw in the mirrors, identical in their chic navy blue tailor-mades, for travelling, madame, or walking. A maid had dealt with the furs. Henceforth, a maid would deal with everything.<br /> "See," he said, gesturing towards those elegant girls. "I have acquired a whole harem for myself!"<br /> I found that I was trembling. My breath came quickly. I could not meet his eye and turned my head away, out of pride, out of shyness, and watched a dozen husbands approach me in a dozen mirrors and slowly, methodically, teasingly, unfasten the buttons of my jacket and slip it from my shoulders. Enough! No; more! Off comes the skirt; and next the blouse of apricot linen that cost more than the dress I had for first communion. The play of the waves outside in the cold sun glittered on his monocle; his movements seemed to me deliberately coarse, vulgar. The blood rushed to my face again, and stayed there.<br /> And yet, you see, I guessed it might be so -- that we should have a formal disrobing of the bride, a ritual from the brothel. Sheltered as my life had been, how could I have failed, even in the world of prim bohemia in which I lived, to have heard hints of his world?<br /> He stripped me, gourmand that he was, as if he were stripping the leaves off an artichoke -- but do not imagine much finesse about it; this artichoke was no particular treat for the diner nor was he yet in any greedy haste. He approached his familiar treat with a weary appetite. And when nothing but my scarlet, palpitating core remained, I saw, in the mirror, the living image of an etching by Rops from the collection he had shown me when our engagement permitted us to be alone together. . . the child with her sticklike limbs, naked but for her button boots, her gloves, shielding her face with her hand as though her face were the last repository of her modesty; and the old, monocled lecher who examined her, limb by limb. He in his London tailoring; she, bare as a lamb chop. Most pornographic of all confrontations. And so my purchaser unwrapped his bargain. And, as at the opera, when I had first seen my flesh in his eyes, I was aghast to feel myself stirring.<br /> At once he closed my legs like a book and I saw again the rare movement of his lips that meant he smiled.<br /> Not yet. Later. Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure, my little love.<br /> And I began to shudder, like a racehorse before a race, yet also with a kind of fear, for I felt both a strange, impersonal arousal at the thought of love and at the same time a repugnance I could not stifle for his white, heavy flesh that had too much in common with the armfuls of arum lilies that filled my bedroom in great glass jars, those undertakers' lilies with the heavy pollen that powders your fingers as if you had dipped them in turmeric. The lilies I always associate with him; that are white. And stain you.<br /> This scene from a voluptuary's life was now abruptly terminated. It turns out he has business to attend to; his estates, his companies -- even on your honeymoon? Even then, said the red lips that kissed me before he left me alone with my bewildered senses -- a wet, silken brush from his beard; a hint of the pointed tip of the tongue. Disgruntled, I wrapped a negligee of antique lace around me to sip the little breakfast of hot chocolate the maid brought me; after that, since it was a second nature to me, there was nowhere to go but the music room and soon I settled down at my piano.<br /> Yet only a series of subtle discords flowed from beneath my fingers: Bout of tune. . . only a little out of tune; but I'd been blessed with perfect pitch and could not bear to play any more. Sea breezes are bad for pianos; we shall need a resident piano-tuner on the premises if I'm to continue with my studies! I flung down the lid in a little fury of disappointment; what should I do now, how shall I pass the long, sea-lit hours until my husband beds me?<br /> I shivered to think of that.<br /> His library seemed the source of his habitual odour of Russian leather. Row upon row of calf-bound volumes, brown and olive, with gilt lettering on their spines, the octavo in brilliant scarlet morocco. A deep-buttoned leather sofa to recline on. A lectern, carved like a spread eagle that held open upon it an edition of Huysmans's Là-bas, from some over-exquisite private press; it had been bound like a missal, in brass, with gems of coloured glass. The rugs on the floor, deep pulsing blues of heaven and red of the heart's dearest blood, came from Isfahan and Bokhara; the dark panelling gleamed; there was the lulling music of the sea and a fire of apple logs. The flames flickered along the spines inside the glass-fronted case that held books still crisp and new. Eliphas Levy; the name meant nothing to me. I squinted at a title or two: The Initiation, The Key of Mysteries, The Secret of Pandora's Box, and yawned. Nothing, here, to detain a seventeen-year-old girl waiting for her first embrace. I should have liked, best of all, a novel in yellow paper; I wanted to curl up on the rug before the blazing fire, lose myself in a cheap novel, munch sticky liqueur chocolates. If I rang for them, a maid would bring me the chocolates.<br /> Nevertheless, I opened the doors of the bookcase idly to browse. And I think I knew, I knew by some tingle of the fingertips, even before I opened that slim volume with no title at all on the spine, what I should find inside. When he showed me the Rops, newly bought, dearly prized, had he not hinted that he was a connoisseur of such things? Yet I had not bargained for this, the girl with tears hanging on her cheeks like stuck pearls, her cunt a split fig below the great globes of her buttocks on which the knotted tails of the cat were about to descend, while a man in a black mask fingered with his free hand his prick, that curved upwards like a scimitar he held. The picture had a caption "Reproof of curiosity." My mother, with all the precision of her eccentricity, had told me what it was that lovers did; I was innocent but not naive. The Adventures of Eulalie at the Harem of the Grand Turk had been printed, according to the flyleaf, in Amsterdam in 1748, a rare collector's piece. Had some ancestor brought it back himself from that northern city? Or had my husband bought it for himself, from one of those dusty little bookshops on the Left Bank where an old man peers at you through spectacles an inch thick, daring you to inspect his wares. . . I turned the pages in the anticipation of fear; the print was rusty. Here was another steel engraving: "Immolation of the wives of the Sultan". I knew enough for what I saw in that book to make me gasp.<br /> There was a pungent intensification of the odour of leather that suffused his library; his shadow fell across the massacre.<br /> "My little nun has found the prayerbooks, has she?" he demanded, with a curious mixture of mockery and relish; then, seeing my painful, furious bewilderment, he laughed at me aloud, snatched the book from my hands and put it down on the sofa.<br /> "Have the nasty pictures scared Baby? Baby mustn't play with grownups' toys until she's learned how to handle them, must she?"<br /> Then he kissed me. And with, this time, no reticence. He kissed me and laid his hand imperatively upon my breast, beneath the sheath of ancient lace. I stumbled on the winding stair that led to the bedroom, to the bed on which he had been conceived, I stammered foolishly: We've not taken luncheon yet; and, besides, it is broad daylight. . .<br /> All the better to see you.<br /> He made me put on my choker, the family heirloom of one woman who had escaped the blade. With trembling fingers, I fastened the thing about my neck. It was cold as ice and chilled me. He twined my hair into a rope and lifted it off my shoulders so that he could the better kiss the downy furrows below my ears; that made me shudder. And he kissed those blazing rubies, too. He kissed them before he kissed my mouth. Rapt, he intoned: "Of her apparel she retains/Only her sonorous jewellery."<br /> A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside.<br /><br />I was brought to my senses by the intent shrilling of the telephone. He lay beside me, felled like an oak, breathing stertorously, as if he had been fighting with me. In the course of that one-sided struggle, I had seen his deathly composure shatter like a porcelain vase flung against a wall; I had heard him shriek and blaspheme at the orgasm; I had bled. And perhaps I had seen his face without its mask; and perhaps I had not. Yet I had been infinitely dishevelled by the loss of my virginity.<br /> I gathered myself together, reached into the cloisonne cupboard beside the bed that concealed the telephone and addressed the mouthpiece. His agent in New York. Urgent.<br /> I shook him awake and rolled over on my side, cradling my spent body in my arms. His voice buzzed like a hive of distant bees. My husband. My husband, who, with so much love, filled my bedroom with lilies until it looked like an embalming parlour. Those somnolent lilies, that wave their heavy heads, distributing their lush, insolent incense reminiscent of pampered flesh.<br /> When he'd finished with the agent, he turned to me and stroked the ruby necklace that bit into my neck, but with such tenderness now, that I ceased flinching and he caressed my breasts. My dear one, my little love, my child, did it hurt her? He's so sorry for it, such impetuousness, he could not help himself; you see, he loves her so. . . and this lover's recitative of his brought my tears in a flood. I clung to him as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort me for suffering it. For a while, he murmured to me in a voice I'd never heard before, a voice like the soft consolations of the sea. But then he unwound the tendrils of my hair from the buttons of his smoking jacket, kissed my cheek briskly and told me the agent from New York had called with such urgent business that he must leave as soon as the tide was low enough. Leave the castle? Leave France! And would be away for at least six weeks.<br /> "But it is our honeymoon!"<br /> A deal, an enterprise of hazard and chance involving several millions, lay in the balance, he said. He drew away from me into that waxworks stillness of his; I was only a little girl, I did not understand. And, he said unspoken to my wounded vanity, I have had too many honeymoons to find them in the least pressing commitments. I know quite well that this child I've bought with a handful of coloured stones and the pelts of dead beasts won't run away. But, after he'd called his Paris agent to book a passage for the States next day -- just one tiny call, my little one -- we should have time for dinner together.<br /> And I had to be content with that.<br /> A Mexican dish of pheasant with hazelnuts and chocolate; salad; white, voluptuous cheese; a sorbet of muscat grapes and Asti spumante. A celebration of Krug exploded festively. And then acrid black coffee in precious little cups so fine it shadowed the birds with which they were painted. I had cointreau, he had cognac in the library, with the purple velvet curtains drawn against the night, where he took me to perch on his knee in a leather armchair beside the flickering log fire. He had made me change into the chaste little Poiret shift of white muslin; he seemed especially fond of it, my breasts showed through the flimsy stuff, he said, like little soft white doves that sleep, each one, with a pink eye open. But he would not let me take off my ruby choker, although it was growing very uncomfortable, nor fasten up my descending hair, the sign of a virginity so recently ruptured that still remained a wounded presence between us. He twined his fingers in my hair until I winced; I said, I remember, very little.<br /> The maid will have changed our sheets already," he said. "We do not hang the bloody sheets out of the window to prove to the whole of Brittany you are a virgin, not in these civilised times. But I should tell you it would have been the first time in all my married lives I could have shown my interested tenants such a flag."<br /> Then I realised, with a shock of surprise, how it must have been my innocence that captivated him -- the silent music, he said, of my unknowingness, like La Tenasse des audiences au clair de lune played upon a piano with keys of ether. You must remember how ill at ease I was in that luxurious place, how unease had been my constant companion during the whole length of my courtship by this grave satyr who now gently martyrised my hair. To know that my naivety gave him some pleasure made me take heart. Courage! I shall act the fine lady to the manner born one day, if only by virtue of default.<br /> Then, slowly yet teasingly, as if he were giving a child a great mysterious treat, he took out a bunch of keys from some interior hidey-hole in his jacket -- key after key, a key, he said, for every lock in the house. Keys of all kinds -- huge, ancient things of black iron; others slender, delicate, almost baroque; wafer-thin Yale keys for safes and boxes. And, during his absence, it was I who must take care of them all.<br /> I eyed the heavy bunch with circumspection. Until that moment, I had not given a single thought to the practical aspects of marriage with a great house, great wealth, a great man, whose key ring was as crowded as that of a prison warder. Here were the clumsy and archaic keys for the dungeons, for dungeons we had in plenty although they had been converted into cellars for his wines; the dusty bottles inhabited in racks all those deep holes of pain in the rock on which the castle was built. There are the keys to the kitchens, this is the key to the picture gallery, a treasure house filled by five centuries of avid collectors -- ah! he foresaw I would spend hours there.<br /> He had amply indulged his taste for the Symbolists, he told me with a glint of greed. There was Moreau's great portrait of his first wife, the famous Sacrificial Victim with the imprint of the lacelike chains on her pellucid skin. Did I know the story of the painting of that picture? How, when she took off her clothes for him for the first time, she fresh from her bar in Montmartre, she had robed herself involuntarily in a blush that reddened her breasts, her shoulders, her arms, her whole body? He had thought of that story, of that dear girl, when first he had undressed me. . . Ensor, the great Ensor, his monolithic canvas: The Foolish Virgins. two or three late Gauguins, his special favourite the one of the tranced brown girl in the deserted house which was called: Out of the Night We Come, Into the Night We Go. And, besides the additions he had made himself, his marvellous inheritance of Watteaus, Poussins and a pair of very special Fragonards, commissioned for a licentious ancestor who, it was said, had posed for the master's brush himself with his own two daughters. . . He broke off his catalogue of treasures abruptly.<br /> Your thin white face, cherie; he said, as if he saw it for the first time. Your thin white face, with its promise of debauchery only a connoisseur could detect.<br /> A log fell in the fire, instigating a shower of sparks; the opal on my finger spurted green flame. I felt so giddy as if I were on the edge of a precipice; I was afraid, not so much of him, of his monstrous presence, heavy as if he had been gifted at birth with more specific gravity than the rest of us, the presence that, even when I thought myself most in love with him, always subtly oppressed me. . . No. I was not afraid of him; but of myself. I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes. I hardly recognised myself from his description of me and yet, and yet -- might there not be a grain of beastly truth in them? And, in the red firelight, I blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption.<br /> Here is the key to the china cabinet -- don't laugh, my darling; there's a king's ransom in Sevres in that closet, and a queen's ransom in Limoges. And a key to the locked, barred room where five generations of plate are kept.<br /> Keys, keys, keys. He would trust me with the keys to his office, although I was only a baby; and the keys to his safes, where he kept the jewels I should wear, he promised me, when we returned to Paris. Such jewels! Why, I would be able to change my earrings and necklaces three times a day, just as the Empress Josephine used to change her underwear. He doubted, he said, with that hollow, knocking sound that served him for a chuckle, I would be quite so interested in his share certificates although they, of course, were worth infinitely more.<br /> Outside our firelit privacy, I could hear the sound of the tide drawing back from the pebbles of the foreshore; it was nearly time for him to leave me. One single key remained unaccounted for on the ring and he hesitated over it; for a moment, I thought he was going to unfasten it from its brothers, slip it back into his pocket and take it away with him.<br /> "What is that key?" I demanded, for his chaffing had made me bold. "The key to your heart? Give it me!"<br /> He dangled the key tantalisingly above my head, out of reach of my straining fingers; those bare red lips of his cracked sidelong in a smile.<br /> "Ah, no," he said. "Not the key to my heart. Rather, the key to my enfer."<br /> He left it on the ring, fastened the ring together, shook it musically, like a carillon. Then threw the keys in a jingling heap in my lap. I could feel the cold metal chilling my thighs through my thin muslin frock. He bent over me to drop a beard-masked kiss on my forehead.<br /> "Every man must have one secret, even if only one, from his wife," he said. "Promise me this, my whey-faced piano-player; promise me you'll use all the keys on the ring except that last little one I showed you. Play with anything you find, jewels, silver plate; make toy boats of my share certificates, if it pleases you, and send them sailing off to America after me. All is yours, everywhere is open to you -- except the lock that this single key fits. Yet all it is is the key to a little room at the foot of the west tower, behind the still-room, at the end of a dark little corridor full of horrid cobwebs that would get into your hair and frighten you if you ventured there. Oh, and you'd find it such a dull little room! But you must promise me, if you love me, to leave it well alone. It is only a private study, a hideaway, a "den", as the English say, where I can go sometimes, on those infrequent yet inevitable occasions when the yoke of marriage seems to weigh too heavily on my shoulders. There I can go, you understand, to savour the rare pleasure of imagining myself wifeless."<br /> There was a little thin starlight in the courtyard as, wrapped in my furs, I saw him to his car. His last words were, that he had telephoned the mainland and taken a piano-tuner on to the staff; this man would arrive to take up his duties the next day. He pressed me to his vicuna breast, once, and then drove away.<br /><br />I had drowsed away that afternoon and now I could not sleep. I lay tossing and turning in his ancestral bed until another day-break discoloured the dozen mirrors that were iridescent with the reflections of the sea. The perfume of the lilies weighed on my senses; when I thought that, henceforth, I would always share these sheets with a man whose skin, as theirs did, contained that toad-like, clammy hint of moisture, I felt a vague desolation that within me, now my female wound had healed, there had awoken a certain queasy craving like the cravings of pregnant women for the taste of coal or chalk or tainted food, for the renewal of his caresses. Had he not hinted to me, in his flesh as in his speech and looks, of the thousand, thousand baroque intersections of flesh upon flesh? I lay in our wide bed accompanied by, a sleepless companion, my dark newborn curiosity.<br /> I lay in bed alone. And I longed for him. And he disgusted me. Were there jewels enough in all his safes to recompense me for this predicament? Did all that castle hold enough riches to recompense me for the company of the libertine with whom I must share it? And what, precisely, was the nature of my desirous dread for this mysterious being who, to show his mastery over me, had abandoned me on my wedding night?<br /> Then I sat straight up in bed, under the sardonic masks of the gargoyles carved above me, riven by a wild surmise. Might he have left me, not for Wall Street but for an importunate mistress tucked away God knows where who knew how to pleasure him far better than a girl whose fingers had been exercised, hitherto, only by the practice of scales and arpeggios? And, slowly, soothed, I sank back on to the heaping pillows; I acknowledged that the jealous scare I'd just given myself was not unmixed with a little tincture of relief.<br /> At last I drifted into slumber, as daylight filled the room and chased bad dreams away. But the last thing I remembered, before I slept, was the tall jar of lilies beside the bed, how the thick glass distorted their fat stems so they looked like arms, dismembered arms, drifting drowned into greenish water.<br /> Coffee and croissants to console this bridal, solitary waking. Delicious. Honey, too, in a section of comb on a glass saucer. The maid squeezed the aromatic juice from an orange into a chilled goblet while I watched her as I lay on the lazy midday bed of the rich. Yet nothing, this morning, gave me more than a fleeting pleasure except to hear that the piano-tuner had been at work already. When the maid told me that, I sprang out of bed and pulled on my old serge skirt and flannel blouse, costume of a student, in which I felt far more at ease with myself than in any of my fine new clothes.<br /> After my three hours of practice, I called the piano-tuner in, to thank him. He was blind, of course; but young, with a gentle mouth and grey eyes that fixed upon me although they could not see me. He was a blacksmith's son from the village across the causeway; a chorister in the church whom the good priest had taught a trade so that he could make a living. All most satisfactory. Yes. He thought he would be happy here. And if, he added shyly, he might sometimes be allowed to hear me play. . . for, you see, he loved music. Yes. Of course, I said. Certainly. He seemed to know that I had smiled.<br /> After I dismissed him, even though I'd woken so late, it was still barely time for my "five o'clock". The housekeeper, who, thoughtfully forewarned by my husband, had restrained herself from interrupting my music, now made me a solemn visitation with a lengthy menu for a late luncheon. When I told her I did not need it, she looked at me obliquely, along her nose. I understood at once that one of my principal functions as chatelaine was to provide work for the staff. But, all the same, I asserted myself and said I would wait until dinner-time, although I looked forward nervously to the solitary meal. Then I found I had to tell her what I would like to have prepared for me; my imagination, still that of a schoolgirl, ran riot. A fowl in cream -- or should I anticipate Christmas with a varnished turkey? No; I have decided. Avocado and shrimp, lots of it, followed by no entree at all. But surprise me for dessert with every ice-cream in the ice box. She noted all down but sniffed; I'd shocked her. Such tastes! Child that I was, I giggled when she left me. But, now. . . what shall I do, now?<br /> I could have spent a happy hour unpacking the trunks that contained my trousseau but the maid had done that already, the dresses, the tailor-mades hung in the wardrobe in my dressing room, the hats on wooden heads to keep their shape, the shoes on wooden feet as if all these inanimate objects were imitating the appearance of life, to mock me. I did not like to linger in my overcrowded dressing room, nor in my lugubriously lily-scented bedroom. How shall I pass the time?<br /> I shall take a bath in my own bathroom! And found the taps were little dolphins made of gold, with chips of turquoise for eyes. And there was a tank of goldfish, who swam in and out of moving fronds of weeds, as bored, I thought, as I was. How I wished he had not left me. How I wished it were possible to chat with, say, a maid; or the piano-tuner . . . but I knew already my new rank forbade overtures of friendship to the staff.<br /> I had been hoping to defer the call as long as I could, so that I should have something to look forward to in the dead waste of time I foresaw before me, after my dinner was done with, but, at a quarter before seven, when darkness already surrounded the castle, I could contain myself no longer. I telephoned my mother. And astonished myself by bursting into tears when I heard her voice.<br /> No, nothing was the matter. Mother. I have gold bath taps.<br /> I said, gold bath taps!<br /> No; I suppose that's nothing to cry about, Mother.<br /> The line was bad, I could hardly make out her congratulations, her questions, her concern, but I was a little comforted, when I put the receiver down.<br /> Yet there still remained one whole hour to dinner and the whole, unimaginable desert of the rest of the evening.<br /> The bunch of keys lay, where he had left them, on the rug before the library fire which had warmed their metal so that they no longer felt cold to the touch but warm, almost, as my own skin. How careless I was; a maid, tending the logs, eyed me reproachfully as if I'd set a trap for her as I picked up the clinking bundle of keys, the keys to the interior doors of this lovely prison of which I was both the inmate and the mistress and had scarcely seen. When I remembered that, I felt the exhilaration of the explorer.<br /> Lights! More lights!<br /> At the touch of a switch, the dreaming library was brilliantly illuminated. I ran crazily about the castle, switching on every light I could find -- I ordered the servants to light up all their quarters, too, so the castle would shine like a seaborne birthday cake lit with a thousand candles, one for every year of its life, and everybody on shore would wonder at it. When everything was lit as brightly as the café in the Gare du Nord, the significance of the possessions implied by the bunch of keys no longer intimidated me, for I was determined, now, to search through them all for evidence of my husband's true nature.<br /> His office first, evidently.<br /> A mahogany desk half a mile wide, with an impeccable blotter and a bank of telephones. I allowed myself the luxury of opening the safe that contained the jewellery and delved sufficiently among the leather boxes to find out how my marriage had given me access to a jinn's treasure -- parures, bracelets, rings. . . While I was thus surrounded by diamonds, a maid knocked on the door and entered before I spoke; a subtle discourtesy. I would speak to my husband about it. She eyed my serge skirt superciliously; did madame plan to dress for dinner?<br /> She made a moue of disdain when I laughed to hear that, she was far more the lady than I. But imagine -- to dress up in one of my Poiret extravaganzas, with the jewelled turban and aigrette on my head, roped with pearl to the navel, to sit down all alone in the baronial dining hall at the head of that massive board at which King Mark was reputed to have fed his knights. . . I grew calmer under the cold eye of her disapproval. I adopted the crisp inflections of an officer's daughter. No. I would not dress for dinner. Furthermore, I was not hungry enough for dinner itself. She must tell the housekeeper to cancel the dormitory feast I'd ordered. Could they leave me sandwiches and a flask of coffee in my music room? And would they all dismiss for the night?<br /> Mais oui, madame.<br /> I knew by her bereft intonation I had let them down again but I did not care; I was armed against them by the brilliance of his hoard. But I would not find his heart amongst the glittering stones; as soon as she had gone, I began a systematic search of the drawers of his desk.<br /> All was in order, so I found nothing. Not a random doodle on an old envelope, nor the faded photograph of a woman. Only the files of business correspondence, the bills from the home farms, the invoices from tailors, the billet-doux from international financiers. Nothing. And this absence of the evidence of his real life began to impress me strangely; there must, I thought, be a great deal to conceal if he takes such pains to hide it.<br /> His office was a singularly impersonal room, facing inwards, on to the courtyard, as though he wanted to turn his back on the siren sea in order to keep a clear head while he bankrupted a small businessman in Amsterdam or -- I noticed with a thrill of distaste -- engage in some business in Laos that must, from certain cryptic references to his amateur botanist's enthusiasm for rare poppies, be to do with opium. Was he not rich enough to do without crime? Or was the crime itself his profit? And yet I saw enough to appreciate his zeal for secrecy.<br /> Now I had ransacked his desk, I must spend a cool-headed quarter of an hour putting every last letter back where I had found it, and, as I covered the traces of my visit, by some chance, as I reached inside a little drawer that had stuck fast, I must have touched a hidden spring, for a secret drawer flew open within that drawer itself; and the secret drawer contained -- at last! -- a file marked: Personal.<br /> I was alone, but for my reflection in the uncurtained window.<br /> I had the brief notion that his heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tisue paper, lay in this file. It was a very thin one.<br /> I could have wished, perhaps, I had not found that touching, ill-spelt note, on a paper napkin marked La Coupole, that began: "My darling, I cannot wait for the moment when you may make me yours completely." The diva had sent him a page of the score of Tristan, the Liebestod, with the single, cryptic word: "Until. . ." scrawled across it. But the strangest of all these love letters was a postcard with a view of a village graveyard, among mountains, where some black-coated ghoul enthusiastically dug at a grave; this little scene, executed with the lurid exuberance of Grand Guignol, was captioned: "Typical Transylvanian Scene -- Midnight, All Hallows." And, on the other side, the message: "On the occasion of this marriage to the descendant of Dracula -- always remember, 'the supreme and unique pleasure of love is the certainty that one is doing evil.' Toutes amities, C."<br /> A joke. A joke in the worst possible taste; for had he not been married to a Romanian countess? And then I remembered her pretty, witty face, and her name -- Carmilla. My most recent predecessor in this castle had been, it would seem, the most sophisticated.<br /> I put away the file, sobered. Nothing in my life of family love and music had prepared me for these grown-up games and yet these were clues to his self that showed me, at least, how much he had been loved, even if they did not reveal any good reason for it. But I wanted to know still more; and as I closed the office door and locked it, the means to discover more fell in my way.<br /> Fell, indeed; and with the clatter of a dropped canteen of cutlery, for, as I turned the slick Yale lock, I contrived, somehow, to open up the key ring itself, so that all the keys tumbled loose on the floor, and the very first key I picked out of that pile was, as luck or ill fortune had it, the key to the room he had forbidden me, the room he would keep for his own so that he could go there when he wished to feel himself once more a bachelor.<br /> I made my decision to explore it before I felt a faint resurgence of my ill-defined fear of his waxen stillness. Perhaps I half-imagined, then, that I might find his real self in his den, waiting there to see if indeed I had obeyed him; that he had sent a moving figure of himself to New York, the enigmatic, self-sustaining carapace of his public person, while the real man, whose face I had glimpsed in the storm of orgasm, occupied himself with pressing private business in the study at the foot of the west tower, behind the still-room. Yet, if that were so, it was imperative that I should find him, should know him; and I was too deluded by his apparent taste for me to think my disobedience might truly offend him.<br /> I took the forbidden key from the heap and left the others lying there.<br /> It was now very late and the castle was adrift, as far as it could go from the land, in the middle of the silent ocean where, at my orders, it floated, like a garland of light. And all silent, all still, but for the murmuring of the waves.<br /> I felt no fear, no intimation of dread. Now I walked as firmly as I had done in my mother's house.<br /> Not a narrow, dusty little passage at all; why had he lied to me? but an ill-lit one, certainly; the electricity, for some reason did not extend here, so I retreated to the still-room and found a bundle of waxed tapers in a cupboard, stored there with matches, to light the oak board at grand dinners. I put a match to my little taper and advanced with it in my hand, like a penitent along the corridor hung with heavy, I think Venetian, tapestries. The flame picked out here, the head of a man, there, the rich breast of a woman spilling through a rent in her dress -- the Rape of the Sabines, perhaps? The naked swords and immolated horses suggested some grisly mythological subject. The corridor wound downwards; there was an almost imperceptible ramp to the thickly carpeted floor. The heavy hangings on the wall muffled my footsteps, even my breathing. For some reason, it grew very warm, the sweat sprang out in beads on my brow. I could no longer hear the sound of the sea.<br /> A long, a winding corridor, as if I were in the viscera of the castle; and this corridor led to a door of worm-eaten oak, low, round-topped, barred with black iron.<br /> And still I felt no fear, no raising of the hairs on the back of the neck, no pricking of the thumbs.<br /> The key slid into the new lock as easily as a hot knife into butter.<br /> No fear; but hesitation, a holding of the spiritual breath.<br /> If I found some traces of his heart in a file marked: Personal, perhaps, here, in his subterranean privacy, I might find a little of his soul. It was the consciousness of the possibility of such a discovery, of its possible strangeness, that kept me for a moment motionless, before in the foolhardiness of my already subtly tainted innocence I turned the key and the door creaked slowly back.<br /><br /> "There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer," opined my husband's favourite poet; I had learned something of the nature of that similarity on my marriage bed. And now my taper showed me the outlines of a rack. There was also a great wheel, like the ones I had seen in woodcuts of the martyrdoms of the saints, in my old nurse's little store of holy books. And -- just one glimpse of it before my little flame caved in and I was left in absolute darkness -- a metal figure, hinged at the side, which I knew to be spiked at the inside and to have the name: the Iron Maiden.<br /> Absolute darkness. And, about me, the instruments of mutilation.<br /> Until that moment, this spoiled child did not know she had inherited nerves and a will from the mother who had defied the yellow outlaws of Indo-China. My mother's spirit drove me on, into the dreadful place, in a cold ecstasy to know the very worst. I fumbled for the matches in my pocket; what a dim lugubrious light they gave! And yet, enough, oh, more than enough, to see a room designed for desecration and some dark night of unimaginable lovers whose embraces were annihilation.<br /> The walls of this stark torture chamber were the naked rock; they gleamed as if they were sweating with fright. At the four corners of the room were funerary urns, of great antiquity, Etruscan, perhaps, and, on three-legged ebony stands, the bowls of incense he had left burning which filled the room with a sacerdotal reek. Wheel, rack and Iron Maiden were, I saw, displayed as grandly as if they were items of statuary and I was almost consoled, then, and almost persuaded myself that I might have stumbled only upon a little museum of his perversity, that he had installed these monstrous items here only for contemplation.<br /> Yet at the centre of the room lay a catafalque, a doomed, ominous bier of Renaissance workmanship, surrounded by long, white candles and, at its foot, an armful of the same lilies with which he had filled my bedroom, stowed in a four-foot-high jar, glazed with a sombre Chinese red. I scarcely dared examine this catafalque and its occupant more closely; yet I knew I must.<br /> Each time I struck a match to light those candles around her bed, it seemed a garment of that innocence of mine for which he had lusted fell away from me.<br /> The opera singer lay, quite naked, under a thin sheet of very rare and precious linen, such as the princes of Italy used to shroud those whom they had poisoned. I touched her, very gently, on the white breast; she was cool, he had embalmed her. On her throat I could see the blue imprint of his strangler's fingers. The cool, sad flame of the candles flickered on her white, closed eyelids. The worst thing was, the dead lips smiled.<br /> Beyond the catafalque, in the middle of the shadows, a white nacreous glimmer; as my eyes accustomed themselves to the gathering darkness, I at last -- oh horrors! -- made out a skull; yes, a skull, so utterly denuded, now, of flesh, that it scarcely seemed possible the stark bone had once been richly upholstered with life. And this skull was strung up by a system of unseen cords, so that it appeared to hang, disembodied, in the still, heavy air, and it had been crowned with a wreath of white roses, and a veil of lace, the final image of his bride.<br /> Yet the skull was still so beautiful, had shaped with its sheer planes so imperiously the face that had once existed above it, that I recognised her the moment I saw her; face of the evening star walking on the rim of night. One false step, oh, my poor, dear girl, next in the fated sisterhood of his wives; one false step and into the abyss of the dark you stumbled. And where was she, the latest dead, the Romanian countess who might have thought her blood would survive his depredations? I knew she must be here, in the place that had wound me through the castle towards it on a spool of inexorability. But, at first, I could see no sign of her. Then, for some reason -- perhaps some change of atmosphere wrought by my presence -- the metal shell of the Iron Maiden emitted a ghostly twang; my feverish imagination might have guessed its occupant was trying to clamber out, though, even in the midst of my rising hysteria, I knew she must be dead to find a home there.<br /> With trembling fingers, I prised open the front of the upright coffin, with its sculpted face caught in a rictus of pain. Then, overcome, I dropped the key I still held in my hand. It dropped into the forming pool of her blood. She was pierced, not by one but by a hundred spikes, this child of the land of the vampires who seemed so newly dead, so full of blood. . . oh God! how recently had he become a widower? How long had he kept her in this obscene cell? Had it been all the time he had courted me, in the clear light of Paris?<br /> I closed the lid of her coffin very gently and burst into a tumult of sobbing that contained both pity for his other victims and also a dreadful anguish to know I, too, was one of them.<br /> The candles flared, as if in a draught from a door to elsewhere. The light caught the fire opal on my hand so that it flashed, once, with a baleful light, as if to tell me the eye of God -- his eye -- was upon me. My first thought, when I saw the ring for which I had sold myself to this fate, was, how to escape it.<br /> I retained sufficient presence of mind to snuff out the candles round the bier with my fingers, to gather up my taper, to look around, although shuddering, to ensure I had left behind me no traces of my visit.<br /> I retrieved the key from the pool of blood, wrapped it in my handkerchief to keep my hands clean, and fled the room, slamming the door behind me.<br /> It crashed to with a juddering reverberation, like the door of hell.<br /><br />I could not take refuge in my bedroom, for that retained the memory of his presence trapped in the fathomless silvering of his mirrors. My music room seemed the safest place, although I looked at the picture of Saint Cecilia with a faint dread; what had been the nature of her martyrdom? My mind was in a tumult; schemes for flight jostled with one another. . . as soon as the tide receded from the causeway, I would make for the mainland -- on foot, running, stumbling; I did not trust the leather-clad chauffeur, nor the well-behaved housekeeper, and I dared not take any of the pale, ghostly maids into my confidence, either, since they were his creatures, all. Once at the village, I would fling myself directly on the mercy of the gendarmerie.<br /> But -- could I trust them, either? His forefathers had ruled this coast for eight centuries, from this castle whose moat was the Atlantic. Might not the police, the advocates, even the judge, all be in his service, turning a common blind eye to his vices since he was milord whose word must be obeyed? Who, on this distant coast, would believe the white-faced girl from Paris who came running to them with a shuddering tale of blood, of fear, of the ogre murmuring in the shadows? Or, rather, they would immediately know it to be true. But were all honour-bound to let me carry it no further.<br /> Assistance. My mother. I ran to the telephone; and the line, of course, was dead.<br /> Dead as his wives.<br /> A thick darkness unlit by any star, still glazed the windows. Every lamp in my room burned, to keep the dark outside, yet it seemed still to encroach on me, to be present beside me but as if masked by my lights, the night like a permeable substance that could seep into my skin. I looked at the precious little clock made from hypocritically innocent flowers long ago, in Dresden; the hands had scarcely moved one single hour forward from when I first descended to the private slaughterhouse of his. Time was his servant, too; it would trap me, here, in a night that would last until he came back to me, like a black sun on a hopeless morning.<br /> And yet the time might still be my friend; at that hour, that very hour, he set sail for New York.<br /> To know that, in a few moments, my husband would have left France calmed my agitation a little. My reason told me I had nothing to fear; the tide that would take him away to the New World would let me out of the imprisonment of the castle. Surely I could easily evade the servants. Anybody can buy a ticket at the railway station. Yet I was still filled with unease. I opened the lid of the piano; perhaps I thought my own particular magic might help me, now, that I could create a pentacle out of music that would keep me from harm for, if my music had first ensnared him, then might it not also give me the power to free myself from him?<br /> Mechanically, I began to play but my fingers were stiff and shaking. At first, I could manage nothing better than the exercises of Czerny but simply the act of playing soothed me and, for solace, for the sake of the harmonious rationality of its sublime mathematics, I searched among his scores until I found The Well-Tempered Clavier. I set myself the therapeutic task of playing all Bach's equations, every one, and, I told myself, if I played them all through without a single mistake -- then the morning would find me once more a virgin.<br /> Crash of a dropped stick.<br /> His silver-headed cane! What else! Sly, cunning, he had returned; he was waiting for me outside the door!<br /> I rose to my feet; fear gave me strength. I flung back my head defiantly.<br /> "Come in!" My voice astonished me by its firmness, its clarity.<br /> The door slowly, nervously opened and I saw, not the massive irredeemable bulk of my husband but the slight, stooping figure of the piano-tuner, and he looked far more terrified of me than my mother's daughter would have been of the Devil himself. In the torture chamber, it seemed to me that I would never laugh again; now, helplessly, laugh I did, with relief, and, after a moment's hesitation, the boy's face softened and he smiled a little almost in shame. Though they were blind, his eyes were singularly sweet.<br /> "Forgive me," said Jean-Yves. "I know I've given you grounds for dismissing me, that I should be crouching outside your door at midnight. . . but I heard you walking about, up and down -- I sleep in a room at the foot of the west tower -- and some intuition told me you could not sleep and might, perhaps, pass the insomniac hours at your piano. And I could not resist that. Besides, I stumbled over these --"<br /> And he displayed the ring of keys I'd dropped outside my husband's office door, the ring from which one key was missing. I took them from him, looked round for a place to stow them, fixed on the piano stool as if to hide them would protect me. Still he stood smiling at me. How hard it was to make everyday conversation.<br /> "It's perfect," I said. "The piano. Perfectly in tune." But he was full of the loquacity of embarrassment, as though I would only forgive him for his impudence if he explained the cause of it thoroughly.<br /> "When I heard you play this afternoon, I thought I'd never heard such a touch. Such technique. A treat for me, to hear a virtuoso! So I crept up to your door now, humbly as a little dog might, madame, and put my ear to the keyhole and listened, and listened -- until my stick fell to the floor through a momentary clumsiness of mine, and I was discovered."<br /> He had the most touching ingenuous smile.<br /> "Perfectly in tune," I repeated. To my surprise, now I had said it, I found I could not say anything else. I could only repeat: "In tune. . . perfect. . . in tune," over and over again. I saw a dawning surprise in his face. My head throbbed. To see him, in his lovely, blind humanity, seemed to hurt me very piercingly, somewhere inside my breast; his figure blurred, the room swayed about me. After the dreadful revelation of that bloody chamber, it was his tender look that made me faint.<br /> When I recovered consciousness, I found I was lying in the piano-tuner's arms and he was tucking the satin cushion from the piano-stool under my head.<br /> "You are in some great distress," he said. "No bride should suffer so much, so early in her marriage."<br /> His speech had the rhythms of the countryside, the rhythms of the tides.<br /> "Any bride brought to this castle should come ready dressed in mourning, should bring a priest and a coffin with her," I said.<br /> "What's this?"<br /> It was too late to keep silent; and if he, too, were one of my husband's creatures, then at least he had been kind to me. So I told him everything, the keys, the interdiction, my disobedience, the room, the rack, the skull, the corpses, the blood.<br /> "I can scarcely believe it," he said, wondering. "That man. . . so rich; so well-born."<br /> "Here's proof," I said and tumbled the fatal key out of my handkerchief on to the silken rug.<br /> "Oh God," he said. "I can smell the blood."<br /> He took my hand; he pressed his arms about me. Although he was scarcely more than a boy, I felt a great strength flow into me from his touch.<br /> "We whisper all manner of strange tales up and down the coast," he said. "There was a Marquis, once, who used to hunt young girls on the mainland; he hunted them with dogs, as though they were foxes. My grandfather had it from his grandfather, how the Marquis pulled a head out of his saddle bag and showed it to the blacksmith while the man was shoeing his horse. 'A fine specimen of the genus, brunette, eh, Guillaume?' And it was the head of the blacksmith's wife."<br /> But, in these more democratic times, my husband must travel as far as Paris to do his hunting in the salons. Jean-Yves knew the moment I shuddered.<br /> "Oh, madame! I thought all these were old wives' tales, chattering of fools, spooks to scare bad children into good behaviour! Yet how could you know, a stranger, that the old name for this place is the Castle of Murder?"<br /> How could I know, indeed? Except that, in my heart, I'd always known its lord would be the death of me.<br /> "Hark!" said my friend suddenly. "The sea has changed key; it must be near morning. The tide is going down."<br /> He helped me up. I looked from the window, towards the mainland, along the causeway where the stones gleamed wetly in the thin light of the end of the night and, with an almost unimaginable horror, a horror the intensity of which I cannot transmit to you, I saw, in the distance, still far away yet drawing moment by moment inexorably nearer, the twin headlamps of his great black car, gouging tunnels through the shifting mist.<br /> My husband had indeed returned; this time, it was no fancy.<br /> "The key!" said Jean-Yves. "It must go back on the ring, with the others. As though nothing had happened."<br /> But the key was still caked with wet blood and I ran to my bathroom and held it under the hot tap. Crimson water swirled down the basin but, as if the key itself were hurt, the bloody token stuck. The turquoise eyes of the dolphin taps winked at me derisively; they knew my husband had been too clever for me! I scrubbed the stain with my nail brush but still it would not budge. I thought how the car would be rolling silently towards the closed courtyard gate; the more I scrubbed the key, the more vivid grew the stain.<br /> The bell in the gatehouse would jangle. The porter's drowsy son would push back the patchwork quilt, yawning, pull the shirt over his head, thrust his feet into his sabots. . . slowly, slowly; open the door for your master as slowly as you can. . .<br /> And still the bloodstain mocked the fresh water that spilled from the mouth of the leering dolphin.<br /> "You have no more time," said Jean-Yves. "He is here. I know it. I must stay with you."<br /> "You shall not!" I said. "Go back to your room, now. Please."<br /> He hesitated. I put the edge of steel in my voice, for I knew I must meet my lord alone.<br /> "Leave me!"<br /> As soon as he was gone, I dealt with the keys and went to my bedroom. The causeway was empty; Jean-Yves was correct, my husband had already entered the castle. I pulled the curtains close, stripped off my clothes and pulled the bedcurtains around me as a pungent aroma of Russian leather assured me my husband was once again beside me.<br /> "Dearest!"<br /> With the most treacherous, lascivious tenderness, he kissed my eyes, and, mimicking the new bride newly awakened, I flung my arms around him, for on my seeming acquiescence depended my salvation.<br /> "Da Silva of Rio outwitted me," he said wryly. "My New York agent telegraphed Le Havre and saved me a wasted journey. So we may resume our interrupted pleasures, my love."<br /> I did not believe one word of it. I knew I had behaved exactly according to his desires; had he not bought me so that I should do so? I had been tricked into my own betrayal to that illimitable darkness whose source I had been compelled to seek in his absence and, now that I had met that shadowed reality of his that came to life only in the presence of its own atrocities, I must pay the price of my new knowledge. The secret of Pandora's box; but he had given me the box, himself, knowing I must learn the secret. I had played a game in which every move was governed by a destiny as oppressive and omnipotent as himself, since that destiny was himself; and I had lost. Lost at the charade of innocence and vice in which he had engaged me. Lost as the victim loses to the executioner.<br /> His hand brushed my breast, beneath the sheet. I strained my nerves yet could not help but flinch at the intimate touch, for it made me think of the piercing embrace of the Iron Maiden and of his lost lovers in the vault. When he saw my reluctance his eyes veiled over and yet his appetite did not diminish. His tongue ran over red lips already wet. Silent, mysterious, he moved away from me to draw off his jacket. He took the gold watch from his waistcoat and laid it on the dressing table, like a good bourgeois; scooped out his rattling loose change and now -- oh God! -- makes a great play of patting his pockets officiously, puzzled lips pursed, searching for something that he had mislaid. Then turns to me with a ghastly, a triumphant smile.<br /> "But of course! I gave the keys to you!"<br /> "Your keys? Why, of course. Here, they're under the pillow; wait a moment -- what -- Ah! No. . . now, where can I have left them? I was whiling away the evening without you at the piano, I remember. Of course! The music room!"<br /> Brusquely he flung my negligee of antique lace on the bed.<br /> "Go and get them."<br /> "Now? This moment? Can't it wait until morning, my darling?"<br /> I forced myself to be seductive, I saw myself, pale, pliant as a plant that begs to be trampled underfoot, a dozen vulnerable appealing girls reflected in as many mirrors, and I saw how he almost failed to resist me. If he had come to me in bed, I would have strangled him, then.<br /> But he half-snarled: "No. It won't wait. Now."<br /> The unearthly light of dawn filled the room; had only one previous dawn broken upon me in that vile place? And there was nothing for it but to go and fetch the keys from the music stool and pray he would not examine them too closely, pray to God his eyes would fail him, that he might be struck blind.<br /> When I came back into the bedroom carrying the bunch of keys that jangled at every step like a curious musical instrument, he was sitting on the bed in his immaculate shirtsleeves, his head sunk in his hands. And it seemed to me he was in despair.<br /> Strange. In spite of my fear of him, that made me whiter than my wrap, I felt there emanate from him, at that moment, a stench of absolute despair, rank and ghastly, as if the lilies that surrounded him had all at once begun to fester, or the Russian leather of his scent were reverting to the elements of flayed hide and excrement of which it was composed. The chthonic gravity of his presence exerted a tremendous pressure on the room, so that the blood pounded in my ears as if we had been precipitated to the bottom of the sea, beneath the waves that pounded against the shore.<br /> I held my life in my hands amongst those keys and, in a moment, would place it between his well-manicured fingers. The evidence of that bloody chamber had showed me I could expect no mercy. Yet, when he raised his head and stared at me with his blind, shuttered eyes as though he did not recognise me, I felt a terrified pity for him, for this man who lived in such strange, secret places that, if I loved him enough to follow him, I should have to die.<br /> The atrocious loneliness of that monster!<br /> The monocle had fallen from his face. His curling mane was disordered, as if he had run his hands through it in his distraction. I saw how he had lost his impassivity and was now filled with suppressed excitement. The hand he stretched out for those counters in his game of love and death shook a little; the face that turned towards me contained a sombre delirium that seemed to me compounded of a ghastly, yes, shame but also of a terrible, guilty joy as he slowly ascertained how I had sinned. That tell-tale stain had resolved itself into a mark the shape and brilliance of the heart on a playing card. He disengaged the key from the ring and looked at it for a while, solitary, brooding.<br /> "It is the key that leads to the kingdom of the unimaginable," he said. His voice was low and had in it the timbre of certain great cathedral organs that seem, when they are played, to be conversing with God. I could not restrain a sob.<br /> "Oh, my love, my little love who brought me a white gift of music," he said, almost as if grieving. "My little love, you'll never know how much I hate daylight!"<br /> Then he sharply ordered: "Kneel!"<br /> I knelt before him and he pressed the key lightly to my forehead, held it there for a moment. I felt a faint tingling of the skin and, when I involuntarily glanced at myself in the mirror, I saw the heart-shaped stain had transferred itself to my forehead, to the space between the eyebrows, like the caste mark of a Brahmin woman. Or the mark of Cain. And now the key gleamed as freshly as if it had just been cut. He clipped it back on the ring, emitting that same, heavy sigh as he had done when I said I would marry him.<br /> "My virgin of the arpeggios, prepare yourself for martyrdom."<br /> "What form shall it take?" I said.<br /> "Decapitation," he whispered, almost voluptuously. "Go and bathe yourself; put on that white dress you wore to hear Tristan and the necklace that prefigures your end. And I shall take myself off to the armoury, my dear, to sharpen my great-grandfather's ceremonial sword."<br /> "The servants?"<br /> "We shall have absolute privacy for our last rites; I have already dismissed them. If you look out of the window you can see them going to the mainland."<br /> It was now the full, pale light of morning; the weather was grey, indeterminate, the sea had an oily, sinister look, a gloomy day on which to die. Along the causeway I could see trouping every maid and scullion, every potboy and pan-scourer, valet, laundress and vassal who worked in the great house, most on foot, a few on bicycles. The faceless housekeeper trudged along with a great basket in which, I guessed, she'd stowed as much as she could ransack from the larder. The Marquis must have given the chauffeur leave to borrow the motor for the day, for it went last of all, at a stately pace, as though the procession were a cortège and the car already bore my coffin to the mainland for burial.<br /> But I knew no good Breton earth would cover me, like a last, faithful lover; I had another fate.<br /> "I have given them all a day's holiday, to celebrate our wedding," he said. And smiled.<br /> However hard I stared at the receding company, I could see no sign of Jean-Yves, our latest servant hired but the preceding morning.<br /> "Go, now. Bathe yourself; dress yourself. The lustratory ritual and the ceremonial robing; after that, the sacrifice. Wait in the music room until I telephone for you. No, my dear!" And he smiled, as I started, recalling the line was dead. "One may call inside the castle just as much as one pleases; but outside -- never."<br /> I scrubbed my forehead with the nail brush as I had scrubbed the key but this red mark would not go away, either, no matter what I did, and I knew I would wear it until I died, though that would not be long. Then I went to my dressing room and put on the white muslin shift, costume of a victim of an auto-da-fe, he had bought me to listen to the Liebestod in. Twelve young women combed out twelve listless sheaves of brown hair in the mirrors; soon, there would be none. The mass of lilies that surrounded me exhaled, now, the odour of their withering. They looked like the trumpets of the angels of death.<br /> On the dressing table, coiled like a snake about to strike, lay the ruby choker.<br /> Already almost lifeless, cold at heart, I descended the spiral staircase to the music room but there I found I had not been abandoned.<br /> "I can be of some comfort to you," the boy said. "Though not of much use."<br /> We pushed the piano stool in front of the open window so that, for as long as I could, I would be able to smell the ancient, reconciling smell of the sea that, in time, will cleanse everything, scour the old bones white, wash away all the stains. The last little chambermaid had trotted along the causeway long ago and now the tide, fated as I, came tumbling in, the crisp wavelets splashing on the old stones.<br /> "You do not deserve this," he said.<br /> "Who can say what I deserve or no?" I said. "I've done nothing; but that may be sufficient reason for condemning me."<br /> "You disobeyed him," he said. "That is sufficient reason for him to punish you."<br /> "I only did what he knew I would."<br /> "Like Eve," he said.<br /> The telephone rang a shrill imperative. Let it ring. But my lover lifted me up and set me on my feet; I must answer it. The receiver felt heavy as earth.<br /> "The courtyard. Immediately."<br /> My lover kissed me, he took my hand. He would come with me if I would lead him. Courage. When I thought of courage, I thought of my mother. Then I saw a muscle in my lover's face quiver.<br /> "Hoofbeats!" he said.<br /> I cast one last, desperate glance from the window and, like a miracle, I saw a horse and rider galloping at a vertiginous speed along the causeway, though the waves crashed, now, high as the horse's fetlocks. A rider, her black skirts tucked up around her waist so she could ride hard and fast, a crazy, magnificent horsewoman in widow's weeds.<br /> As the telephone rang again.<br /> "Am I to wait all morning?"<br /> Every moment, my mother drew nearer.<br /> "She will be too late,"Jean-Yves said and yet he could not restrain a note of hope that, though it must be so, yet it might not be so.<br /> The third, intransigent call.<br /> "Shall I come up to heaven to fetch you down, Saint Cecilia? You wicked woman, do you wish me to compound my crimes by desecrating the marriage bed?"<br /> So I must go to the courtyard where my husband waited in his London-tailored trousers and the shirt from Turnbull and Asser, beside the mounting block, with, in his hand, the sword which his great-grandfather had presented to the little corporal, in token of surrender to the Republic, before he shot himself. The heavy sword, unsheathed, grey as that November morning, sharp as childbirth, mortal.<br /> When my husband saw my companion, he observed: "Let the blind lead the blind, eh? But does even a youth as besotted as you think she was truly blind to her own desires when she took my ring? Give it me back, whore."<br /> The fires in the opal had all died down. I gladly slipped it from my finger and, even in that dolorous place, my heart was lighter for the lack of it. My husband took it lovingly and lodged it on the tip of his finger; it would go no further.<br /> "It will serve me for a dozen more fiancees," he said. "To the block, woman. No -- leave the boy; I shall deal with him later, utilising a less exalted instrument than the one with which I do my wife the honour of her immolation, for do not fear that in death you will be divided."<br /> Slowly, slowly, one foot before the other, I crossed the cobbles. The longer I dawdled over my execution, the more time it gave the avenging angel to descend. . .<br /> "Don't loiter, girl! Do you think I shall lose appetite for the meal if you are so long about serving it? No; I shall grow hungrier, more ravenous with each moment, more cruel. . . Run to me, run! I have a place prepared for your exquisite corpse in my display of flesh!"<br /> He raised the sword and cut bright segments from the air with it, but still I lingered although my hopes, so recently raised, now began to flag. If she is not here by now, her horse must have stumbled on the causeway, have plunged into the sea. . . One thing only made me glad; that my lover would not see me die.<br /> My husband laid my branded forehead on the stone and, as he had done once before, twisted my hair into a rope and drew it away from my neck.<br /> "Such a pretty neck," he said with what seemd to be a genuine, retrospective tenderness. "A neck like the stem of a young plant."<br /> I felt the silken bristle of his beard and the wet touch of his lips as he kissed my nape. And, once again, of my apparel I must retain only my gems; the sharp blade ripped my dress in two and it fell from me. A little green moss, growing in the crevices of the mounting block, would be the last thing I should see in all the world.<br /> The whizz of that heavy sword.<br /> And -- a great battering and pounding at the gate, the jangling of the bell, the frenzied neighing of a horse! The unholy silence of the place shattered in an instant. The blade did not descend, the necklace did not sever, my head did not roll. For, for an instant, the beast wavered in his stroke, a sufficient split second of astonished indecision to let me spring upright and dart to the assistance of my lover as he struggled sightlessly with the great bolts that kept her out.<br /> The Marquis stood transfixed, utterly dazed, at a loss. It must have been as if he had been watching his beloved Tristan for the twelfth, the thirteenth time and Tristan stirred, then leapt from his bier in the last act, announced in a jaunty aria interposed from Verdi that bygones were bygones, crying over spilt milk did nobody any good and, as for himself, he proposed to live happily ever after. The puppet master, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, impotent at the last, saw his dolls break free of their strings, abandon the rituals he had ordained for them since time began and start to live for themselves; the king, aghast, witnesses the revolt of his pawns.<br /> You never saw such a wild thing as my mother, her hat seized by the winds and blown out to sea so that her hair was her white mane, her black lisle legs exposed to the thigh, her skirts tucked round her waist, one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver and, behind her, the breakers of the savage, indifferent sea, like the witnesses of a furious justice. And my husband stood stock-still, as if she had been Medusa, the sword still raised over his head as in those clockwork tableaux of Bluebeard that you see in glass cases at fairs.<br /> And then it was as though a curious child pushed his centime into the slot and set all in motion. The heavy, bearded figure roared out aloud, braying with fury, and wielding the honourable sword as if it were a matter of death or glory, charged us, all three.<br /> On her eighteenth birthday, my mother had disposed of a man-eating tiger that had ravaged the villages in the hills north of Hanoi. Now, without a moment's hesitation, she raised my father's gun, took aim and put a single, irreproachable bullet through my husband's head.<br /> We lead a quiet life, the three of us. I inherited, of course, enormous wealth but we have given most of it away to various charities. The castle is now a school for the blind, though I pray that the children who live there are not haunted by any sad ghosts looking for, crying for, the husband who will never return to the bloody chamber, the contents of which are buried or burned, the door sealed.<br /> I felt I had the right to retain sufficient funds to start a little music school here, on the outskirts of Paris, and we do well enough. Sometimes we can even afford to go to the Opera, though never to sit in a box, of course We know we are the source of many whisperings and much gossip but the three of us know the truth of it and mere chatter can never harm us. I can only bless the -- what shall I call it? -- the maternal telepathy that sent my mother running headlong from the telephone to the station after I had called her, that night. I never heard you cry before, she said, by way of explanation. Not when you were happy. And who ever cried because of gold bath taps?<br /> The night train, the one I had taken; she lay in her berth, sleepless as I had been. When she could not find a taxi at the lonely halt, she borrowed old Dobbin from a bemused farmer, for some internal urgency told her that she must reach me before the incoming tide sealed me away from her for ever. My poor old nurse, left scandalised at home -- what? interrupt milord on his honeymoon? -- she died soon after. She had taken so much secret pleasure in the fact that her little girl had become a marquise and now here I was, scarcely a penny the richer, widowed at seventeen in the most dubious circumstances and busily engaged in setting up house with a piano-tuner. Poor thing, she passed away in a sorry state of disillusion! But I do believe my mother loves him as much as I do.<br /> No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see it -- not for fear of his revulsion, since I know he sees me clearly with his heart -- but, because it spares my shame.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-66863892382706918992009-03-04T08:07:00.001-08:002009-03-04T08:28:38.326-08:00Tailalat<span style="font-weight: bold;">By: Pramoedya Ananta Toer</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(Cerita ulang tahun untuk sahabat Bob Hering)</span><br /><br /><br />Ada sidikjari, tapi jarang disebut tentang sidikwajah. Dan tailalat tak lain dari bagian sidikmuka. Yang akan kuceritakan padamu bukan tailalat tunggal, tapi kembar, simetrik mengapit batang hidung. Dan itulah satu-satunya yang pernah kulihat dalam hidupku. Awal tahun 1946.<br /><br />Sebagai pembantu-letnan aku mendapat perintah mengerahkan seksiku menyambut kedatangan serombongan tamu. Di stasiun Cikampek. Hari, tanggal, dan bulan, sudah tak dapat kuingat, setidak-tidaknya sekitar jam 10 pagi.<br /><br />Keretapi dari Jakarta masuk. Tak ada rombongan tamu yang turun berbondong dari kereta api. Penumpang-penumpang lain turun dan segera meninggalkan perron. Seorang-dua turun, berdiri tenang-tenang di samping gerbong. Salah seorang kudekati. Nah, itulah, tailalat kembar mengapit batang hidungnya, hidung pribumi asli.<br /><br />“Dari Jakarta, Pak?”, ia hanya tersenyum manis. “Mau ke mana?”<br /><br />“Yogya.”<br /><br />“Dalam rombongan?”<br /><br />“Tidak salah.”<br /><br />“Tujuan?” ia awasi senjatapi pada pinggangku, mengangguk-angguk, kemudian menepuk-nepuk punggungku.<br /><br />“Indah ya, sangat indah, usia muda, semua bisa menangani,” ia mengangguk-angguk ria, “bagus, teruskan apa yang telah kami gagal melakukan. Dulu.”<br /><br />“Apa yang telah gagal Bapak lakukan?”<br /><br />“Berontak untuk merdeka. Dan kalian, anak-anak muda, sudah bikin tanahair ini merdeka. Tinggal mempertahankan dan mengisinya.”<br /><br />Mendadak ia menyerang aku dengan pelukan dan ciuman. Keramahannya lenyap. Kurasai airmata menetesi wajahku. Peluit kepala setasiun mengatasi suara hiruk-pikuk setasiun.<br /><br />“Kami dari rombongan Digulis, dari Australia. Selamat, nak, selamat, kita akan bertemu di tempat lain.”<br /><br />Ia ciumi lagi aku. Menepuk bahuku, dan melompat naik ke dalam gerbong. Kereta berangkat. Belum lagi sempat kuketahui namanya....<br /><br />Kembali ke markas resimen kulaporkan, tugas telah selesai kulakukan. Mayorku bangkit dari kursi, melotot, hanya tidak membentak:<br /><br />“Goblok. Tugas segampang itu tidak mampu kau lakukan. Belajar kau menghargai para pejuang. Selesai!”<br /><br />Setelah memberi hormat dan balik-kanan-jalan terdengar bentakan dalam diriku sendiri: Goblok! Sebelumnya tak kau katakan, kan, siapa mereka? Tempat tujuan juga bukan Cikampek, kan? Yogya! Ai, bapak tailalat kembar.<br /><br />Dua puluh tahun telah lewat. Sekarang bukan di medan bebas, apalagi mempertahankan dan mengisi kemerdekaan. Sekarang di rutan, rumah tahanan. Salemba di Jakarta.<br /><br />Sekali di bulan November 1966 datang rombongan tahanan baru, pindahan dari penjara Cipinang, Jakarta juga. Barang tujuh orang. Ha? Salah seorang bertailalat kembar, mengapit batang hidung. Dia? Tak semudah itu menjawab tekateki itu. Pribadi dan rombongan baru harus menjalani kucilan. Sampai berapa hari atau minggu, itu tergantung para penguasa penjara. Nyatanya ia dan rombongannya mendekam di blok E, blok hukuman untuk tapol. Dari blok K, tempatku dikurung, setiap hari kulihat ia dan rombongannya digiring keluar blok E ke ruang pemeriksaan. Bila balik ke bloknya ada saja di antara mereka yang terpincang-pincang, atau dipapah, atau dengan muka lebam, atau mencekam bagian-bagian tubuh yang habis jadi landasan benda tumpul. Dan si tailalat kembar? Sekali waktu terlihat ia kembali ke blok dengan menyeret kaki kanannya. Pemandangan biasa.<br /><br />Berapa umurnya? Dalam duapuluh tahun belakangan ini memang ada sejumlah tulisan tentang Digul yang kubaca. Jadi kuperkirakan ia dibuang ke Digul dan Australia selama 13 tahun, jadi 43 usianya. Ditambah dengan 20 tahun masa kemerdekaan nasional dan ketiadaan kemerdekaan pribadi sekarang jadi 63 tahun. Patut kalau kekuatannya tidak seutuh tahun 1946 dulu.<br /><br />Tetap tidak semudah itu menemuinya. Memang semua tapol berhimpun sewaktu appel. Barisan-barisan yang disusun menurut blok masing-masing membuat orang sulit dapat bertemu dengan orang dari blok lain. Setelah appel selesai barisan kembali ke blok masing-masing.<br /><br />Sebulan kemudian ia dipindahkan dari blok E ke blok L, bersebelahan dengan blokku. Tiga hari kemudian masih juga tak dapat aku bicara dengannya. Pada hari keempat ia meninggalkan blok L menuju ke ruang pemeriksaan.<br /><br />Sengaja aku tunggu ia pulang. Umur 63 tahun. Dan penganiayaan apa lagi harus ia deritakan?<br /><br />Ha? Ia pulang ke blok tanpa cedera. Wajahnya ceria, dan, tersenyum panjang, mata nyapu tanah. Sebelum memasuki blok ia tebarkan pandang ke seluruh dan semua blok yang mengelilingi tanah lapang penjara.<br /><br />Ha? Seorang petugas datang ke bloknya dan membawanya ke kantor pimpinan penjara. Dan sejak itu ia tak pernah kelihatan lagi. Pindah ke penjara lain? Mungkin dibebaskan karena usianya yang sudah lanjut. Mungkin.... Nyatanya tidak. Seorang tapol blok L yang dipindahkan ke blok K jadi saksi karena ia termasuk rombongan yang dipindahkan kemari dari penjara Cipinang.<br /><br />Si tailalat kembar punya pendapat: ia tak punya kepercayaan pada daya administrasi tuan-tuan baru ini. Ia hendak menguji ketidakpercayaannya. Setelah dipindahkan ke blok L, waktu selesai appel, ia minta pada petugas supaya diinterogasi, karena, katanya, ia belum pernah diperiksa selama ini. Itu sebabnya ia keluar dari bloknya, sendirian, ke ruang permeriksaan. Di sana ia menggunakan nama lain, dan, mengaku pekerjaannya mencari beling di sampahan. (Waktu itu belum dipergunakan kata: pemulung). Ia lulus ujian: punya nama lain dan bebas.<br /><br />Setelah itu tak ada kabar-beritanya. Seluruh dan semua tapol sibuk dengan kelaparan masing-masing. Tanpa diduga ulah si tailalat membangkitkan inspirasi pada tapol-tapol muda lain. Dengan diam-diam tentu. Dan, tiga tapol muda suatu hari lolos melarikan diri. Seorang di antaranya nampaknya anak Jakarta yang tak pernah keluar dari kotanya. Ia kedapatan sedang nongkrong di pinggir jalan raya menjajakan durian dalam dua keranjang bambu. Tertangkap, dan masuk lagi ke rutan Salemba. Tentu saja setelah melewati penganiayaan. Beberapa lainnya yang dipindahkan ke penjara di Tangerang, juga melarikan diri dan tak pernah tertangkap.<br /><br />Kemudian seorang lagi melarikan diri melalui gorong-gorong. Waktu selnya diperiksa kedapatan beberapa lembar kertas bertuliskan tangan. Karena soalnya tulisan aku yang dipanggil untuk menjalani pemeriksaan.<br /><br />Tulis apa saja maunya, perintah petugas di kantor pimpinan rutan. Ia berikan beberapa lembar kertas dan ballpoint. Aku menulis apa saja. Tulisan tegak, perintahnya. Waktu ia datang lagi perintahnya berubah: tulisan miring. Setelah itu: tulisan bebas. Dan akhirnya: cukup! Aku boleh kembali ke blok. Tidak ada apa-apa lagi. Artinya: miring, tegak, atau pun bebas, tulisan yang tertinggal di sel pelarian itu tak ada kesamaannya dengan tulisan tanganku.<br /><br />Juli 1969 tapol Salemba dipindahkan ke Nusa Kambangan. Sebulan kemudian dikapalkan ke Buru. Dalam kapal para tapol dari seluruh penjara di Jawa dapat bertemu dan berkenalan. Seorang dari Pacitan nampaknuya berminat untuk berkenalan. Sidikwajahnya bukan tailalat. Hanya garis lurus dari ujung atas telinga sampai dagu. Bekas sayatan senjata tajam. Yang seperti itu bukan sesuatu untuk dibicarakan manusia tapol-nya tuan-tuan baru. Setiap orang telah diberi ijasah bekas luka. Dalam masa kerjapaksa di Buru ia menempati Unit I, aku III. Jadi hanya sekali-dua kami dapat bertemu sampai 1978 atau 9 tahun kerjapaksa. Pada tahun itu ia dibebaskan. Dan karena sidikwajahnya ia tidak memilih Pacitan sebagai tempat tinggal, tapi Jakarta.<br /><br />Tiga tahun setelah aku sendiri dibebaskan dari Buru pada 1979 akhir tanpa kuduga aku bertemu dengan teman dari Pacitan itu. Sekitar hampir jam 5 pagi. Jalan-jalan masih senyap. Yang lalu-lalang hanya sejumlah pelari pagi, termasuk tubuhku. Seorang pemulung sedang duduk di bangku beton menghadapi keranjang sampahnya. Ia tersenyum ramah waktu kudekati. Dan kata-katanya yang mengiris jantungku terdengar.<br /><br />“Maaf, untuk orang seperti aku ini tidak memerlukan lari pagi.”<br /><br />Ia harus kerja maka pembicaraan panjang membuatnya gelisah. Dan ternyata ia tinggal di ladang sampah Jalan Raya Pramuka. Sebuah kotak triplek dan seng adalah rumahnya, ditinggalinya bersama seorang kakek, juga pemulung. Hanya beberapa ratus meter dari halte bus tempat kami bercengkerama.<br /><br />“Kakek lebih siang berangkatnya. Jera digonggong dan disalaki anjing dalam kesepian subuh. Tahu apa dia bilang tentang anjing Jakarta? Kesadaran klasnya cukup tinggi, jauh lebih tinggi dari tuannya, semua para tuan.”<br /><br />“Dia bekas tapol?”<br /><br />“Ya, tapol Salemba, katanya. Lolos pada tahun kedua, katanya.”<br /><br />“Hari libur sajalah,” kataku. Aku sodorkan uang penggantinya.<br /><br />Ia nampak agak tenang. Memang tak kutunggu ucapan terima kasihnya yang memang tak pernah ia ucapkan.<br /><br />“Ia juga dari Pacitan?”<br /><br />“Bukan, Kebumen.”<br /><br />“Siapa namanya?”<br /><br />“Namanya tidak penting. Jangan dibikin dia jadi lebih sulit lagi. Lebih dari tiga perempat hidupnya dia jadi sasaran penindasan.”<br /><br />“Kalau tertindas lebih dari tiga perempat hidupnya artinya dia bekas Digulis.”<br /><br />Ia pura-pura tidak dengar.<br /><br />“Mari sarapan di rumahku.”<br /><br />“Terimakasih banyak. Lebih baik jangan.”<br /><br />“Atau kita ke rumahmu? Kan dekat saja?”<br /><br />“Perjanjian antar kami, aku dan kakek: tidak menerima tamu siapa pun.”<br /><br />“Mengerti, mengerti. Kalian memang perlu mencurigai siapa pun.”<br /><br />“Jangankan orang-orang seperti kami. Pemuda-pemuda yang menyorong kemungkinan Proklamasi saja, di mana mereka semua sekarang? Hanya satu saja yang lolos, pernah jadi wakil presiden pula. Dan proklamatornya sendiri, bagaimana pula nasibnya?”<br /><br />Ia keluarkan uang pemberian dari saku, menghitungnya, dan separoh ia kembalikan.<br /><br />“Silakan teruskan lari pagi.”<br /><br />“Satu pertanyaan lagi: apa si kakek punya tailalat di kiri dan kanan batang hidungnya?”<br /><br />Dalam keremangan subuh nampak ia melotot, suaranya parau: “Jadi bung kenal dia? Maaf saja, lupakan pertemuan ini. Anggap tak pernah terjadi.”<br /><br />Ia bangkit dan pergi dengan keranjang sampah dari bambu tergantung di belakang punggung.<br /><br />Tepat jam 10 pagi setelah membaca koran dan menyelesaikan kerja kliping, aku bergegas setengah lari ke ladang sampah jalan raya Pramuka. Ada beberapa kotak triplek dan seng. Satu di antaranya dalam keadaan terbalik. Sikap teman Pacitan itu memberi petunjuk, kotak terbalik itulah rumahnya bersama si kakek. Mereka memang tak mau ditemui dan dikenal.<br /><br />Dia tak ingin dikenal oleh siapa pun. Baiklah. Maafkan aku. Dan tidak lebih dari sebulan kemudian lewat di depan rumahku seorang pemulung muda, dengan keranjang bambu pada punggung dan besi beton pembalik sampah pada tangan kanannya. Ia berjalan bimbang dengan pandangan menyisiri pinggiran jalan tempat parade tong dan kotak sampah pemukiman. Lain dari para pemulung lain ia berpakaian sobek-sobek dan dekil. Buru-buru aku masuk rumah, mengambil keranjang tempat pakaian bekas dan kuberikan padanya.<br /><br />“Terimakasih,” ia membungkuk dan pergi membawa keranjang tsb. Sorehari waktu aku membersihkan belakang rumah... ya ampun, keranjang beserta pakaian bekas kami tergeletak di situ. Tak pernah dalam hidupku aku menderita malu seperti ini. Malu: tak mengerti si pemulung tak membutuhkan pakaian bekas. Pakaiannya yang dekil dan sobek-sobek mungkin semacam seragam harian sebagai pemulung. Bukan karena tak punya pakaian! Betapa aku tak tahu duduk perkara sekecil itu! Tak kuat menanggung malu maka kuberitakan pengalaman ini pada seorang sahabat, seorang professor emeritus di seberang lautan. Perasaan malu itu memang mereda, namun tetap mengganggu bila teringat. Jadi, tahu apa kau sebenarnya tentang rakyatmu? Dan semua ini hanya gara-gara teman pemulung dari Pacitan itu.<br /><br />Nyatanya cerita ini belum habis sampai di sini.<br /><br />Seorang teman bersama temannya mengajak ke lapangan setir mobil. Temannya adalah instruktur setir mobil. Seperti biasa bicaranya tak terkendali, riuh, dengan tangan, kepala, bahkan kaki memberi tekanan pada suaranya, dan semburan percikan ludahnya menggerimisi wajah lawan-bicaranya.<br /><br />“Ayohlah,” katanya, “kalahkan traumamu. Dia cuma mobil, tak perlu ada trauma menyopir.”<br /><br />Memang pernah kuceritakan padanya, dalam bulan pertama pulang dari Buru aku mendapat mobil Datsun. Kubawa seorang instruktur untuk membiasakan menyopir. Maklum sudah puluhan tahun tak pernah pegang kemudi. Waktu Jepang menyerah mobil bergeletakan sepanjang jalan. Siapa pun boleh ambil untuk dirinya asal punya bensin. Seorang pesakitan Cipinang dalam masa kosong kekuasaan membebaskan diri bersama yang lain-lain. Nampaknya ia bekas kriminal berat, pindahan dari penjara Kutaraja, Aceh. Sudah tak dapat kuingat namanya, juga tak kuingat bagaimana kami berkenalan. Dialah, entah bagaimana, bisa mendapatkan bensin. Sebuah Willys Cabriolet ia isi tangkinya. Mesinnya ternyata bagus. Mari, Bung, katanya, belajar nyetir. Kami keliling kota. Beberapa hari kemudian aku telah dapat mengendalikan kereta ajaib itu. Setelah ia yakin aku bisa mengendarainya, wut!, ia hilang tak jelas rimbanya. Dan tak pernah berjumpa lagi. Mobil itu sendiri kemudian juga hilang tak jelas rimbanya waktu kuparkir di pinggir jalan di samping rumah, salahnya bensin dalam tangkinya.<br /><br />Ini hanya cerita bahwa memang ada pengalaman menyopir padaku. Nampaknya pengalaman secuwil itu membikin aku terlalu percaya diri. Instruktur di sampingku hampir-hampir tak kugubris. Datsun berputar entah berapa puluh kali mengelilingi lapangan.<br /><br />“Sekarang mundur,” perintahnya.<br /><br />Waktu itulah kaki tak tahu diri. Yang seharusnya rem diinjaknya, justru gas yang kena. Dalam keadaan mundur kencang pantat mobil menubruk warung dan mesin mati. Wanita penjaga warung yang duduk di bangku kayu, pucat, tak bisa bicara. Seorang polisi lalulintas, yang mengawasi lapangan, lari mendapatkan kami. Dalam keadaan terguncang aku keluar dari mobil. Juga sang instruktur.<br /><br />Dengan wajah keras ia perintahkan aku memperlihatkan surat-surat kendaraan, dan tentu saja KTP. Matanya melompat-lompat dari kertas-kertas di tangannya pada wajahku. Kemudian, kemudian sekali, mata itu ditujukan pada kakiku.<br /><br />O, bapak, katanya. Lama sudah kukenal, baru sekali bertemu orangnya. Ia angkat tangan kanannya memberi hormat. Dan sesuai engan tradisi militer Jepang aku membungkuk membalas. Begini saja, ya pak, ganti saja kerugiannya.<br /><br />Pemilik (atau penjaga) warung itu masih duduk kaku. Maaf, bu, mari kami bawa ke rumahsakit. Ia menggeleng. Seorang lelaki datang dan menengahi. Biar aku sendiri antarkan dia ke dokter. Barangkali suaminya.<br /><br />Aku berikan kartu namaku. Ganti rugi dan ongkos dokter harap diambil pada alamat ini, kataku. Cukup, pak polisi? Kataku.<br /><br />Ia mengangguk. Aku salami lelaki itu dan minta maaf. Ia mengangguk. Juga kuularkan tangan pada wanita itu. Kurasai tangannya menggigil.<br /><br />Trauma nyopir itu begitu mendalamnya sehingga dalam mobil teman dan temannya aku masih tetap waswas, kalah terhadap perasaan sendiri. Tak mampu melihat kembali wanita penjaga warung yang seperti patung batu karena kagetnya. Sebelum mobil memasuki gerbang lapangan latihan nyopir mobil melewati seorang pemulung. Benar, dia teman dari Pacitan dengan sidikwajahnya yang abadi. Keranjang bambu tidak lagi pada punggungnya. Ia berjalan santai menghela gerobak. Di atas tumpukan sampah, tua tanpa daya, kakek dengan tailalat kembarnya.<br /><br />“Stop!” kupinta pada teman. “Turun sini. Nanti aku pulang sendiri.”<br /><br />“Masih juga groggy? Trauma tak kunjung habis?”<br /><br />Tanpa menjawab aku turun, berhenti di pinggir jalan menunggu sejoli ex tapol itu lewat. Dan matahari sudah mulai terasa terik.<br /><br />“Ai-ai,” tegurku.<br /><br />Ia berhenti. Tangan tetap memegangi boom gerobak. Dan ia tersenyum. Kakek di atas sampah dalam terobak asyik membaca koran. Bukan tekateki dari mana ia dapatkan kacamata. Sampah memberikan segala-galanya.<br /><br />“Sudah makan?”<br /><br />“Nanti sudah.” Nampaknya ia lebih ramah daripada dalam pertemuan di halte bus dulu. Lima kilometer dari tempat ini. Waktu hendak menegur si kakek ia melarang. “Sama sekali tak ada gunanya. Tuli sepenuh tuli.” Ia pinggirkan gerobaknya dan dengan sangat hati-hati menyandarkan boom gerobaknya di atas bibir jambang bung dari beton.<br /><br />Kakek sama sekali tak memperhatikan kami.<br /><br />“Lalu apa yang dibacanya?”<br /><br />“Semua, kecuali iklan penawaran. Yang terpenting baginya iklan jenis lain. Bukan iklan penawaran. Iklan kematian.”<br /><br />“Ha?”<br /><br />“Jangan ganggu dia. Lihat saja. Ya, ia sedang membaca iklan kesukaannya. Perhatikan airmukanya.”<br /><br />Memang kuperhatikan. Ternyata selain berkacamata ia juga menggunakan kaca pembesar di tangan kiri. Jelas pipinya yang sudah kempot itu sedang tersenyum.<br /><br />“Tersenyum, kan? Itu tanda yang meninggal jauh lebih muda dari dirinya. Kalau dengan geleng-geleng kepala itu tanda yang mati berumur di bawah tiga puluh. Bila ia tercenung tanpa gerak wajah yang mati berumur sekitar seratus tahun.”<br /><br />“Luar biasa. Betapa kau kenali dia.”<br /><br />“Sehari-harian aku bersama dia. Berak pun aku yang mengurus.”<br /><br />Sekarang aku yang tercenung. Mataku berkaca-kaca. Betapa tinggi setiakawan anak Pacitan ini. Suaraku tersekat di tenggorokan waktu aku mencoba bertanya berapa umurnya.<br /><br />“Dua-tiga tahun lagi dia akan melewati seratus. Seperti itu, dan masih tetap jadi landasan penindasan. Hanya agar beberapa sang gelintir bisa hidup kaya, terlalu kaya, mewah dan berkuasa.”<br /><br />“Stt!”<br /><br />“Ya, begini kami. Bung memang bukan bagian dari kami.” Ia angkat boom gerobaknya dan meneruskan perjalanannya. Ia tak mengharapkan percakapan berlanjut. Dan ia berjalan terus tanpa menoleh. Kakek dari Kebumen masih tetap membaca koran bekas. Mereka hilang di tikungan. Tak ada guna mengikuti. Teman Pacitan itu tak ingin diketahui tempat tinggalnya.<br /><br />Cerita ini mestinya selesai sampai di sini. Nyatanya cerita ini belum mampu mengakhiri dirinya sendiri.<br /><br />Waktu menggelinding begitu cepatnya. Indonesia, katanya, telah setengah abad merdeka. Memang bukan kemerdekaan bagi orang-orang seperti kami, karena kami hanya batu-batu kerikil buat fondasi kemerdekaan. Tempat kami tetap dalam fondasi. Kemerdekaan itu sendiri tumbuh dan berkembang tanpa pernah mengidahkan fondasinya sendiri.<br /><br />Limapuluh tahun merdeka pun telah lewat beberapa bulan. Waktu itulah pandangku nanar menggerayangi wajah teman Pacitan, menelusuri bekas sodetan senjata tajam dari telinga sampai dagunya. Memang dia. Seongggok tubuh yang duduk menggelesot di atas lantai stasiun Kota. Ia tak mengenakan seragam pemulung yang sobek-sobek dan dekil. Bahkan rambutnya pun kelimis bersisir. Di atas lantai stasiun memang ada tong-tong sampah, tapi keranjang bambu dan gerobak sampah tidak ada. Lantai kelihatan bersih. Juga tak ada di halaman stasiun. Jadi apa sekarang kerjanya?<br /><br />Ia tak menyadari sedang aku perhatikan. Kuikuti pandangannya yang berpindah-pindah. Ternyata ia sedang memperhatikan beberapa bocah sedang bekerja menyikat sepatu para calon penumpang keretapi. Kemudian aku duduk di dekatnya di atas lantai. Ia menengok padaku dengan pandang curiga. Kaki dan tangannya disiapkannya untuk bertarung. Tiba-tiba:<br /><br />“Oh, bung!”<br /><br />“Mana gerobaknya?”<br /><br />“Biasa. Dirampas.”<br /><br />“Dirampas siapa?”<br /><br />“Siapa lagi?” Dan aku mengangguk mengerti. “Hanya gerobak, kan? Barang sepuluh tahun lalu kusaksikan becak dirampasi. Jerih payah bertahun orang menyisakan rejekinya untuk dapat memilikinya. Jadi rumpon di teluk Jakarta. Tanpa ganti rugi. Eh, buat apa kuungkit? Semua orang tahu.” Aku mengangguk.<br /><br />Kutebarkan pandang ke luar stasiun. Memang dia tidak menggerutut, namun nada suaranya begitu menyakitinya. Kalimat apa yang selanjutnya diucapkannya aku tak dengar. Pandangku membawaku ke masa empatpuluh delapan tahun yang lalu. Sebagai tapolnya Belanda kami membabati alang-alang sekitar stasiun ini sampai ke pelabuhan Tanjungpriok. Ke selatan sampai ke lapangan Gambir. Dan istana kolonial di Gambir itu sekarang dinamai Istana Merdeka. Waktu pandangku tertebar ke ruang dalam stasiun dengan sendirinya tergambar kembali secercah hidup tigapuluh lima tahun lalu. Dengan beberapa teman kami hendak menghadiri Konferensi Sastra Jawa di Solo. Sedang santai berdiri menunggu keretapi masuk mulutku, mulutku ini, memekik: copet! Seseorang lari sambil menarik belati, kemudian menghilang entah ke mana. Teman yang juga akan menghadiri konferensi itu menghentikan teriakanku sambil memberikan arjoliku.<br /><br />“Jadi kau masih sempat memikirkan orang-orang seperti kami?” Ia menegur.<br /><br />“Mana kakekmu?”<br /><br />“Kakek? Ia sudah tak membaca koran lagi. Juga tak naik gerobak lagi. Tak akan lagi. Sejak dua bulan lalu. Mati, bung, waktu gubuk-gubuk kami diobrak-obrak buat diubah jadi gedung pencakar langit. Dalam suasana tergusur kami, rumpun pemulung mengantarkannya ke lahatnya. Tak perlu sentimen-sentimenanlah. Orang-orang seperti kita yang paling banyak membiayai pembangunannya para hartawan dan kuasawan.”<br /><br />“Ya, biarpun nama tidak pernah masuk buku mereka.”<br /><br />“Primitif. Semakin lama semakin primitif. Primitif! Itu umpatan kakek bila menilai keadaan. Pembangunan? Jalan-jalan hanya untuk yang bermobil. Pejalan kaki pun tak berhak menggunakannya. Di tanahair sendiri. Tanpa kaki lima. Primitif, itu umpatannya. Immoral, immoral. Dia tak butuhkan tanggapan orang lain. Usia telah merampas pendengarannya. Primitif! Immoral! Dan setiap matanya menangkap jambang-jambang beton di kakilima, apa dengusnya? Jambang di kakilima... tambahan isi kantong mereka, dari kantong semua, demi untuk menghadang kita... sepertinya dia sedang berpantun. Kalau cuma begitu saja, dengusnya sepanjang jalan, puih, gampang amat jadi immoral, semakin lama semakin primitif!”<br /><br />Panjangnya omongannya kali ini membuat perhatianku pada kakek tailalat justru jadi padam.<br /><br />“Jadi, apa kegiatan bung sekarang?”<br /><br />“Lihat anak-anak penyikat dan penyemir sepatu itu?” kembali matanya gentayangan pada mereka. “Masih di jalur lama, bung, membina mereka. Mengajari mereka baca-tulis. Yang lebih penting: melindungi mereka dari ulah mafia, bocah-bocah berandalan, bocah-bocah jalanan juga, yang memeras mereka.”<br /><br />“Mereka takut pada bung?”<br /><br />“Tanda ini,” ia mengusap bekas senjata tajam pada wajahnya, “membuat mereka takut. Tanda ini mereka anggap sebagai ijasah keganasanku. Mudah bagi bung memahami dunia primitif begini, kan? Akhirnya aku ketularan kakek juga: primitif! Primitif!”<br /><br />“Nampaknya sekarang bung lebih ramah padaku.”<br /><br />“Setidak-tidaknya kakek tidak lebih terluka karena mulutku.”<br /><br />“Dia tak pernah tanya tentang buangan di Buru?”<br /><br />“Ya, waktu masih bisa dengar sedikit-sedikit. Juga kuceritakan di Buru juga ada bekas Digulis, tapol tertua, dengan hanya satu harapan: mati dan dikuburkan di Jawa. Dia termasuk rombongan pertama yang dibebaskan. Harapannya hanya separoh terpenuhi: dikuburkan di Jawa memang, tapi mati waktu kapal belum lagi merapat di Tanjungperak.”<br /><br />Di antara lalulalang pasang-pasang kaki, lelaki dan perempuan, suling kereta dan hiruk-pikuk pekerja pengangkut barang, muncul seorang bocah. Tanpa bicara ia sodorkan dua teh botol dingin pada kami.<br /><br />Teman dari Pacitan itu menghapus matanya. Dan:<br /><br />“Tanpa didikan orangtua — memang dia tak punya — tanpa disuruh, sebagian rejeki pagi ia suguhkan pada kita.”<br /><br />“Nampaknya bung memang dicintai mereka,” dan nampaknya ia terharu atas pujian itu. “Memang cuma teh botol, setidak-tidaknya bung telah mulai menuai yang bung tebarkan.” Ia masih terdiam. “Jangan membisu terlalu lama. Kata-katamu tentang kakek penting bagiku. Memang cuma kata-kata, kita hanya bisa ngomong, lebih tidak. Tapi kata-kata, dengan kekuatannya yang khusus, akan mengembara dari kuping ke kuping, dan akan hidup selama-lamanya, selama ummat manusia tidak menjadi tuli semuanya. Dan biar pun tuli mendadak semua, kan masih ada pemahat, pematung, pelukis, dan pengarang, yang tanpa berucap bisa mengatakan?”<br /><br />“Kursus bung terlalu bertele.”<br /><br />“Pembisuan bung terlalu bertele.”<br /><br />Ia nikmati teh botolnya dengan pipa penyedot. Dan botolku sudah kosong.<br /><br />“Waktu ia cukup mengerti, di Buru kita dikenakan kerjapaksa sambil cari makan sendiri, kalau sakit obat-obatan pun harus beli sendiri kontan menyembur sumpah-serapahnya: primitif! primitif. Hanya otak primitif mampu buat aturan seperti itu.”<br /><br />Pustaka tentang Digul membuat kepalaku terangguk-angguk. Ya, para Digulis dijamin makannya setiap bulan. Yang sakit mendapat perawatan lebih baik daripada di Jawa. Dan asal mereka mau bekerja di ladang, mereka dapat sepuluh sen setiap jam, setara tiga kilogram beras. Yang bersedia kerja dalam mesin kolonial lebih banyak lagi dapatnya.<br /><br />“Dan tanpa pengadilan,” ia teruskan semburan kata kakek tailalat, “belasan tahun tanpa pengadilan. Semasa kolonial, 3 hari ditahan tanpa perkara jelas sudah bisa menuntut ganti rugi. Dibunuhi pula, malah tanpa ada komisi penyelidikan. Otak primitif. Diharuskan hafal Pancasila lagi. Di Digul, aparat kolonial itu menghormati pendirian dan sikap politik dan pribadi para buangan. Primitif! Primitif!”<br /><br />“Stop. Setidaknya aku sudah mulai banyak tahu tentang kakek yang tak pernah mengenalku.”<br /><br />Ia habiskan teh botol di tangannya. Dan bocah penyikat sepatu itu datang lagi mengambil botol-botol kosong.<br /><br />“Boleh aku menengok kuburan kakek?”<br /><br />“Tak usahlah. Seratus tahun, satu abad jadi landasan penindasan. Jangan, jangan ganggu dia. Kau takkan tahu tempatnya.”<br /><br />Tiba-tiba ia melompat bangun, berjalan cepat menuju ke suatu pilar stasiun. Dari gerak tangannya nampak ia sedang mengusir seorang pemuda berkuncir berseragam jean. Dan pemuda yang diusirnya tidak langsung pergi. Dari gerak tangannya nampak ia mengancam. Teman dari Pacitan itu mengangguk menerima tantangannya. Setelah lawan-bicaranya pergi baru ia kembali menghampiri.<br /><br />“Bung sendirian. Bagaimana kalau dia membawa teman-temannya?”<br /><br />“Mereka dibuat primitif oleh keadaan. Kalau toh kalah dan mati, setidak-tidaknya terhormat sebagai warganegara Indonesia.”<br /><br />Ia ulurkan tangannya memberi salam dan pergi.<br /><br /><br /><br />Jakarta, 10 Juli 1996Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-86528150296892014212009-03-04T08:04:00.000-08:002009-03-04T08:31:04.493-08:00Girls at War<span style="font-weight: bold;">By: Chinua Achebe</span><br /><br />The first time their paths crossed nothing happened. That was in the first heady days of warlike preparation when thousands of young men (and sometimes women too) were daily turned away from enlistment centres because far too many of them were coming forward burning with readiness to bear arms in defence of the exciting new nation.<br /> The second time they met was at a check-point at Awka. Then the war had started and was slowly moving southwards from the distant northern sector. He was driving from Onitsha to Enugu and was in a hurry. Although intellectually he approved of thorough searches at road-blocks, emotionally he was always offended whenever he had to submit to them. He would probably not admit it but the feeling people got was that if you were put through a search then you could not really be one of the big people. Generally he got away without a search by pronouncing in his deep, authoritative voice: 'Reginald Nwankwo, Ministry of Justice.' That almost always did it. But sometimes either through ignorance or sheer cussedness the crowd at the odd check-point would refuse to be impressed. As happened now at Awka. Two constables carrying heavy Mark 4 rifles were watching distantly from the roadside leaving the actual searching to local vigilantes.<br /> 'I am in a hurry,' he said to the girl who now came up to his car. 'My name is Reginald Nwankwo, Ministry of Justice.'<br /> 'Good afternoon, sir. I want to see your boot.'<br /> 'Oh Christ! What do you think is in the boot?'<br /> 'I don't know, sir.'<br /> He got out of the car in suppressed rage, stalked to the back, opened the boot and holding the lid up with his left hand he motioned with the right as if to say: After you!<br /> 'Are you satisfied?' he demanded.<br /> 'Yes, sir. Can I see your pigeon-hole?'<br /> 'Christ Almighty!'<br /> 'Sorry to delay you, sir. But you people gave us this job to do.'<br /> 'Never mind. You are damn right. It's just that I happen to be in a hurry. But never mind. That's the glove-box. Nothing there as you can see.'<br /> 'All right sir, close it.' Then she opened the rear door and bent down to inspect under the seats. It was then he took the first real look at her, starting from behind. She was a beautiful girl in a breasty blue jersey, khaki jeans and canvas shoes with the new-style hair-plait which gave a girl a defiant look and which they called---for reasons of their own---'air force base'; and she looked vaguely familiar.<br /> 'I am all right, sir,' she said at last meaning she was through with her task. 'You don't recognize me?'<br /> 'No. Should I?'<br /> 'You gave me a lift to Enugu that time I left my school to go and join the militia.'<br /> 'Ah, yes, you were the girl. I told you, didn't I, to go back to school because girls were not required in the militia. What happened?'<br /> 'They told me to go back to my school or join the Red Cross.'<br /> 'You see I was right. So, what are you doing now?'<br /> 'Just patching up with Civil Defence.'<br /> 'Well, good luck to you. Believe me you are a great girl.'<br /> That was the day he finally believed there might be something in this talk about revolution. He had seen plenty of girls and women marching and demonstrating before now. But somehow he had never been able to give it much thought. He didn't doubt that the girls and the women took themselves seriously, they obviously did. But so did the little kids who marched up and down the streets at the time drilling with sticks and wearing their mothers' soup bowls for steel helmets. The prime joke of the time among his friends was the contingent of girls from a local secondary school marching behind a banner: WE ARE IMPREGNABLE!<br /> But after that encounter at the Awka check-point he simply could not sneer at the girls again, nor at the talk of revolution, for he had seen it in action in that young woman whose devotion had simply and without self-righteousness convicted him of gross levity. What were her words? We are doing the work you asked us to do. She wasn't going to make an exception even for one who once did her a favour. He was sure she would have searched her own father just as rigorously.<br /> When their paths crossed a third time, at least eighteen months later, things had got very bad. Death and starvation having long chased out the headiness of the early days, now left in some places blank resignation, in others a rock-like, even suicidal, defiance. But surprisingly enough there were many at this time who had no other desire than to corner whatever good things were still going and to enjoy themselves to the limit. For such people a strange normalcy had returned to the world. All those nervous check-points disappeared. Girls became girls once more and boys boys. It was a tight, blockaded and desperate world but none the less a world---with some goodness and some badness and plenty of heroism which, however, happened most times far, far below the eye-level of the people in this story---in out-of-the-way refugee camps, in the damp tatters, in the hungry and bare-handed courage of the first line of fire.<br /> Reginald Nwankwo lived in Owerri then. But that day he had gone to Nkwerri in search of relief. He had got from Caritas in Owerri a few heads of stock-fish, some tinned meat, and the dreadful American stuff called Formula Two which he felt certain was some kind of animal feed. But he always had a vague suspicion that not being a Catholic put one at a disadvantage with Caritas. So he went now to see an old friend who ran the WCC depot at Nkwerri to get other items like rice, beans and that excellent cereal commonly called Gabon gari.<br /> He left Owerri at six in the morning so as to catch his friend at the depot where he was known never to linger beyond 8.30 for fear of air-raids. Nwankwo was very fortunate that day. The depot had received on the previous day large supplies of new stock as a result of an unusual number of plane landings a few nights earlier. As his driver loaded tins and bags and cartons into his car the starved crowds that perpetually hung around relief centres made crude, ungracious remarks like 'War Can Continue!' meaning the WCC! Somebody else shouted 'Irevolu!' and his friends replied 'shum!'<br /> 'Irevolu!'<br /> 'shum!'<br /> 'Isofeli?'<br /> 'shum!'<br /> 'Isofeli?'<br /> 'Mba!'<br /> Nwankwo was deeply embarrassed not by the jeers of this scarecrow crowd of rags and floating ribs but by the independent accusation of their wasted bodies and sunken eyes. Indeed he would probably have felt much worse had they said nothing, simply looked on in silence, as his boot was loaded with milk, and powdered egg and oats and tinned meat and stock-fish. By nature such singular good fortune in the midst of a general desolation was certain to embarrass him. But what could a man do? He had a wife and four children living in the remote village of Ogbu and completely dependent on what relief he could find and send them. He couldn't abandon them to kwashiokor. The best he could do---and did do as a matter of fact---was to make sure that whenever he got sizeable supplies like now he made over some of it to his driver, Johnson, with a wife and six, or was it seven?, children and a salary of ten pounds a month when gari in the market was climbing to one pound per cigarette cup. In such a situation one could do nothing at all for crowds; at best one could try to be of some use to one's immediate neighbours. That was all.<br /> On his way back to Owerri a very attractive girl by the roadside waved for a lift. He ordered the driver to stop. Scores of pedestrians, dusty and exhausted, some military, some civil, swooped down on the car from all directions.<br /> 'No, no, no,' said Nwankwo firmly. 'It's the young woman I stopped for. I have a bad tyre and can only take one person. Sorry.'<br /> 'My son, please,' cried one old woman in despair, gripping the door-handle.<br /> 'Old woman, you want to be killed?' shouted the driver as he pulled away, shaking her off. Nwankwo had already opened a book and sunk his eyes there. For at least a mile after that he did not even look at the girl until she finding, perhaps, the silence too heavy said: 'You've saved me today. Thank you.'<br /> 'Not at all. Where are you going?'<br /> 'To Owerri. You don't recognize me?'<br /> 'Oh yes, of course. What a fool I am... You are...'<br /> 'Gladys.'<br /> 'That's right, the militia girl. You've changed, Gladys. You were always beautiful of course, but now you are a beauty queen. What do you do these days?'<br /> 'I am in the Fuel Directorate.'<br /> 'That's wonderful.'<br /> It was wonderful, he thought, but even more it was tragic. She wore a high-tinted wig and a very expensive skirt and low-cut blouse. Her shoes, obviously from Gabon, must have cost a fortune. In short, thought Nwankwo, she had to be in the keep of some well-placed gentleman, one of those piling up money out of the war.<br /> 'I broke my rule today to give you a lift. I never give lifts these days.'<br /> 'Why?'<br /> 'How many people can you carry? It is better not to try at all. Look at that old woman.'<br /> 'I thought you would carry her.'<br /> He said nothing to that and after another spell of silence Gladys thought maybe he was offended and so added: 'Thank you for breaking your rule for me.' She was scanning his face, turned slightly away. He smiled, turned, and tapped her on the lap.<br /> 'What are you going to Owerri to do?'<br /> 'I am going to visit my girl friend.'<br /> 'Girl friend? You sure?'<br /> 'Why not?... If you drop me at her house you can see her. Only I pray God she hasn't gone on weekend today; it will be serious.'<br /> 'Why?'<br /> 'Because if she is not at home I will sleep on the road today.'<br /> 'I pray to God that she is not at home.'<br /> 'Why?'<br /> 'Because if she is not at home I will offer you bed and breakfast... What is that?' he asked the driver who had brought the car to an abrupt stop. There was no need for an answer. The small crowd ahead was looking upwards. The three scrambled out of the car and stumbled for the bush, necks twisted in a backward search of the sky. But the alarm was false. The sky was silent and clear except for two high-flying vultures. A humorist in the crowd called them Fighter and Bomber and everyone laughed in relief. The three climbed into their car again and continued their journey.<br /> 'It is much too early for raids,' he said to Gladys, who had both her palms on her breast as though to still a thumping heart. 'They rarely come before ten o'clock.'<br /> But she remained tongue-tied from her recent fright. Nwankwo saw an opportunity there and took it at once.<br /> 'Where does your friend live?'<br /> '250 Douglas Road.'<br /> 'Ah! that's the very centre of town---a terrible place. No bunkers, nothing. I won't advise you to go there before 6 p.m.; it's not safe. If you don't mind I will take you to my place where there is a good bunker and then as soon as it is safe, around six, I shall drive you to your friend. How's that?'<br /> 'It's all right,' she said lifelessly. 'I am so frightened of this thing. That's why I refused to work in Owerri. I don't even know who asked me to come out today.'<br /> 'You'll be all right. We are used to it.'<br /> 'But your family is not there with you?'<br /> 'No,' he said. 'Nobody has his family there. We like to say it is because of air-raids but I can assure you there is more to it. Owerri is a real swinging town and we live the life of gay bachelors.'<br /> 'That is what I have heard.'<br /> 'You will not just hear it; you will see it today. I shall take you to a real swinging party. A friend of mine, a Lieutenant-Colonel, is having a birthday party. He's hired the Sound Smashers to play. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.'<br /> He was immediately and thoroughly ashamed of himself. He hated the parties and frivolities to which his friends clung like drowning men. And to talk so approvingly of them because he wanted to take a girl home! And this particular girl too, who had once had such beautiful faith in the struggle and was betrayed (no doubt about it) by some man like him out for a good time. He shook his head sadly.<br /> 'What is it?' asked Gladys.<br /> 'Nothing. Just my thoughts.'<br /> They made the rest of the journey to Owerri practically in silence.<br /> She made herself at home very quickly as if she was a regular girl friend of his. She changed into a house dress and put away her auburn wig.<br /> 'That is a lovely hair-do. Why do you hide it with a wig?'<br /> 'Thank you,' she said leaving his question unanswered for a while. Then she said: 'Men are funny.'<br /> 'Why do you say that?'<br /> 'You are now a beauty queen,' she mimicked.<br /> 'Oh, that! I mean every word of it.' He pulled her to him and kissed her. She neither refused nor yielded fully, which he liked for a start. Too many girls were simply too easy those days. War sickness, some called it.<br /> He drove off a little later to look in at the office and she busied herself in the kitchen helping his boy with lunch. It must have been literally a look-in, for he was back within half an hour, rubbing his hands and saying he could not stay away too long from his beauty queen.<br /> As they sat down to lunch she said: 'You have nothing in your fridge.'<br /> 'Like what?' he asked, half-offended.<br /> 'Like meat,' she replied undaunted.<br /> 'Do you still eat meat?' he challenged.<br /> 'Who am I? But other big men like you eat.'<br /> 'I don't know which big men you have in mind. But they are not like me. I don't make money trading with the enemy or selling relief or...'<br /> 'Augusta's boy friend doesn't do that. He just gets foreign exchange.'<br /> 'How does he get it? He swindles the government---that's how he gets foreign exchange, whoever he is. Who is Augusta, by the way?'<br /> 'My girl friend.'<br /> 'I see.'<br /> 'She gave me three dollars last time which I changed to forty-five pounds. The man gave her fifty dollars.'<br /> 'Well, my dear girl, I don't traffic in foreign exchange and I don't have meat in my fridge. We are fighting a war and I happen to know that some young boys at the front drink gari and water once in three days.'<br /> 'It is true,' she said simply. 'Monkey de work, baboon de chop.'<br /> 'It is not even that; it is worse,' he said, his voice beginning to shake. 'People are dying every day. As we talk now somebody is dying.'<br /> 'It is true,' she said again.<br /> 'Plane!' screamed his boy from the kitchen.<br /> 'My mother!' screamed Gladys. As they scuttled towards the bunker of palm stems and red earth, covering their heads with their hands and stooping slightly in their flight, the entire sky was exploding with the clamour of jets and the huge noise of homemade anti-aircraft rockets.<br /> Inside the bunker she clung to him even after the plane had gone and the guns, late to start and also to end, had all died down again.<br /> 'It was only passing,' he told her, his voice a little shaky. 'It didn't drop anything. From its direction I should say it was going to the war front. Perhaps our people are pressing them. That's what they always do. Whenever our boys press them, they send an SOS to the Russians and Egyptians to bring the planes.' He drew a long breath.<br /> She said nothing, just clung to him. They could hear his boy telling the servant from the next house that there were two of them and one dived like this and the other dived like that.<br /> 'I see dem well well,' said the other with equal excitement. 'If no to say de ting de kill porson e for sweet for eye. To God.'<br /> 'Imagine!' said Gladys, finding her voice at last. She had a way, he thought, of conveying with a few words or even a single word whole layers of meaning. Now it was at once her astonishment as well as reproof, tinged perhaps with grudging admiration for people who could be so light-hearted about these bringers of death.<br /> 'Don't be so scared,' he said. She moved closer and he began to kiss her and squeeze her breasts. She yielded more and more and then fully. The bunker was dark and unswept and might harbour crawling things. He thought of bringing a mat from the main house but reluctantly decided against it. Another plane might pass and send a neighbour or simply a chance passer-by crashing into them. That would be only slightly better than a certain gentleman in another air-raid who was seen in broad daylight fleeing his bedroom for his bunker stark-naked pursued by a woman in a similar state!<br /> Just as Gladys had feared, her friend was not in town. It would seem her powerful boy friend had wangled for her a flight to Libreville to shop. So her neighbours thought anyway.<br /> 'Great!' said Nwankwo as they drove away. 'She will come back on an arms plane loaded with shoes, wigs, pants, bras, cosmetics and what have you, which she will then sell and make thousands of pounds. You girls are really at war, aren't you?'<br /> She said nothing and he thought he had got through at last to her. Then suddenly she said, 'That is what you men want us to do.'<br /> 'Well,' he said, 'here is one man who doesn't want you to do that. Do you remember that girl in khaki jeans who searched me without mercy at the check-point?'<br /> She began to laugh.<br /> 'That is the girl I want you to become again. Do you remember her? No wig. I don't even think she had any earrings...'<br /> 'Ah, na lie-o. I had earrings.'<br /> 'All right. But you know what I mean.'<br /> 'That time done pass. Now everybody want survival.<br /> They call it number six. You put your number six; I put my number six. Everything all right.'<br /> The Lieutenant-Colonel's party turned into something quite unexpected. But before it did things had been going well enough. There was goat-meat, some chicken and rice and plenty of home-made spirits. There was one fiery brand nicknamed 'tracer' which indeed sent a flame down your gullet. The funny thing was looking at it in the bottle it had the innocent appearance of an orange drink. But the thing that caused the greatest stir was the bread---one little roll for each person! It was the size of a golf-ball and about the same consistency too! But it was real bread. The band was good too and there were many girls. And to improve matters even further two white Red Cross people soon arrived with a bottle of Courvoisier and a bottle of Scotch! The party gave them a standing ovation and then scrambled to get a drop. It soon turned out from his general behaviour, however, that one of the white men had probably drunk too much already. And the reason it would seem was that a pilot he knew well had been killed in a crash at the airport last night, flying in relief in awful weather.<br /> Few people at the party had heard of the crash by then. So there was an immediate damping of the air. Some dancing couples went back to their seats and the band stopped. Then for some strange reason the drunken Red Cross man just exploded.<br /> 'Why should a man, a decent man, throw away his life. For nothing! Charley didn't need to die. Not for this stinking place. Yes, everything stinks here. Even these girls who come here all dolled up and smiling, what are they worth? Don't I know? A head of stockfish, that's all, or one American dollar and they are ready to tumble into bed.'<br /> In the threatening silence following the explosion one of the young officers walked up to him and gave him three thundering slaps---right! left! right!---pulled him up from his seat and (there were things like tears in his eyes) shoved him outside. His friend, who had tried in vain to shut him up, followed him out and the silenced party heard them drive off. The officer who did the job returned dusting his palms.<br /> 'Fucking beast!' said he with an impressive coolness. And all the girls showed with their eyes that they rated him a man and a hero.<br /> 'Do you know him?' Gladys asked Nwankwo.<br /> He didn't answer her. Instead he spoke generally to the party: 'The fellow was clearly drunk,' he said.<br /> 'I don't care,' said the officer. 'It is when a man is drunk that he speaks what is on his mind.'<br /> 'So you beat him for what was on his mind,' said the host, 'that is the spirit, Joe.'<br /> 'Thank you, sir,' said Joe, saluting.<br /> 'His name is Joe,' Gladys and the girl on her left said in unison, turning to each other.<br /> At the same time Nwankwo and a friend on the other side of him were saying quietly, very quietly, that although the man had been rude and offensive what he had said about the girls was unfortunately the bitter truth, only he was the wrong man to say it.<br /> When the dancing resumed Captain Joe came to Gladys for a dance. She sprang to her feet even before the word was out of his mouth. Then she remembered immediately and turned round to take permission from Nwankwo. At the same time the Captain also turned to him and said, 'Excuse me.'<br /> 'Go ahead,' said Nwankwo, looking somewhere between the two.<br /> It was a long dance and he followed them with his eyes without appearing to do so. Occasionally a relief plane passed overhead and somebody immediately switched off the lights saying it might be the Intruder. But it was only an excuse to dance in the dark and make the girls giggle, for the sound of the Intruder was well known.<br /> Gladys came back feeling very self-conscious and asked Nwankwo to dance with her. But he wouldn't. 'Don't bother about me,' he said, 'I am enjoying myself perfectly sitting here and watching those of you who dance.'<br /> 'Then let's go,' she said, 'if you won't dance.'<br /> 'But I never dance, believe me. So please enjoy yourself.'<br /> She danced next with the Lieutenant-Colonel and again with Captain Joe, and then Nwankwo agreed to take her home.<br /> 'I am sorry I didn't dance,' he said as they drove away. 'But I swore never to dance as long as this war lasts.'<br /> She said nothing.<br /> 'When I think of somebody like that pilot who got killed last night. And he had no hand whatever in the quarrel. All his concern was to bring us food...'<br /> 'I hope that his friend is not like him,' said Gladys.<br /> 'The man was just upset by his friend's death. But what I am saying is that with people like that getting killed and our own boys suffering and dying at the war fronts I don't see why we should sit around throwing parties and dancing.'<br /> 'You took me there,' said she in final revolt. 'They are your friends. I don't know them before.'<br /> 'Look, my dear, I am not blaming you. I am merely telling you why I personally refuse to dance. Anyway, let's change the subject... Do you still say you want to go back tomorrow? My driver can take you early enough on Monday morning for you to go to work. No? All right, just as you wish. You are the boss.'<br /> She gave him a shock by the readiness with which she followed him to bed and by her language.<br /> 'You want to shell?' she asked. And without waiting for an answer said, 'Go ahead but don't pour in troops!'<br /> He didn't want to pour in troops either and so it was all right. But she wanted visual assurance and so he showed her.<br /> One of the ingenious economies taught by the war was that a rubber condom could be used over and over again. All you had to do was wash it out, dry it and shake a lot of talcum powder over it to prevent its sticking; and it was as good as new. It had to be the real British thing, though, not some of the cheap stuff they brought in from Lisbon which was about as strong as a dry cocoyam leaf in the harmattan.<br /> He had his pleasure but wrote the girl off. He might just as well have slept with a prostitute, he thought. It was clear as daylight to him now that she was kept by some army officer. What a terrible transformation in the short period of less than two years! Wasn't it a miracle that she still had memories of the other life, that she even remembered her name? If the affair of the drunken Red Cross man should happen again now, he said to himself, he would stand up beside the fellow and tell the party that here was a man of truth. What a terrible fate to befall a whole generation! The mothers of tomorrow!<br /> By morning he was feeling a little better and more generous in his judgements. Gladys, he thought, was just a mirror reflecting a society that had gone completely rotten and maggotty at the centre. The mirror itself was intact; a lot of smudge but no more. All that was needed was a clean duster. 'I have a duty to her,' he told himself, 'the little girl that once revealed to me our situation. Now she is in danger, under some terrible influence.'<br /> He wanted to get to the bottom of this deadly influence. It was clearly not just her good-time girl friend, Augusta, or whatever her name was. There must be some man at the centre of it, perhaps one of these heartless attack-traders who traffic in foreign currencies and make their hundreds of thousands by sending young men to hazard their lives bartering looted goods for cigarettes behind enemy lines, or one of those contractors who receive piles of money daily for food they never deliver to the army. Or perhaps some vulgar and cowardly army officer full of filthy barrack talk and fictitious stories of heroism. He decided he had to find out. Last night he had thought of sending his driver alone to take her home. But no, he must go and see for himself where she lived. Something was bound to reveal itself there. Something on which he could anchor his saving operation. As he prepared for the trip his feeling towards her softened with every passing minute. He assembled for her half of the food he had received at the relief centre the day before. Difficult as things were, he thought, a girl who had something to eat would be spared, not all, but some of the temptation. He would arrange with his friend at the WCC to deliver something to her every fortnight.<br /> Tears came to Gladys's eyes when she saw the gifts. Nwankwo didn't have too much cash on him but he got together twenty pounds and handed it over to her.<br /> 'I don't have foreign exchange, and I know this won't go far at all, but...'<br /> She just came and threw herself at him, sobbing. He kissed her lips and eyes and mumbled something about victims of circumstance, which went over her head. In deference to him, he thought with exultation, she had put away her high-tinted wig in her bag.<br /> 'I want you to promise me something,' he said.<br /> 'What?'<br /> 'Never use that expression about shelling again.'<br /> She smiled with tears in her eyes. 'You don't like it? That's what all the girls call it.'<br /> 'Well, you are different from all the girls. Will you promise?'<br /> 'O.K.'<br /> Naturally their departure had become a little delayed. And when they got into the car it refused to start. After poking around the engine the driver decided that the battery was flat. Nwankwo was aghast.<br /> He had that very week paid thirty-four pounds to change two of the cells and the mechanic who performed it had promised him six months' service. A new battery, which was then running at two hundred and fifty pounds was simply out of the question. The driver must have been careless with something, he thought.<br /> 'It must be because of last night,' said the driver.<br /> 'What happened last night?' asked Nwankwo sharply, wondering what insolence was on the way. But none was intended.<br /> 'Because we use the head light.'<br /> 'Am I supposed not to use my light then? Go and get some people and try pushing it.' He got out again with Gladys and returned to the house while the driver went over to neighbouring houses to seek the help of other servants.<br /> After at least half an hour of pushing it up and down the street, and a lot of noisy advice from the pushers, the car finally spluttered to life shooting out enormous clouds of black smoke from the exhaust.<br /> It was eight-thirty by his watch when they set out. A few miles away a disabled soldier waved for a lift.<br /> 'Stop!' screamed Nwankwo. The driver jammed his foot on the brakes and then turned his head towards his master in bewilderment.<br /> 'Don't you see the soldier waving? Reverse and pick him up!'<br /> 'Sorry, sir,' said the driver. 'I don't know Master wan to pick him.'<br /> 'If you don't know you should ask. Reverse back.'<br /> The soldier, a mere boy, in filthy khaki drenched in sweat lacked his right leg from the knee down. He seemed not only grateful that a car should stop for him but greatly surprised. He first handed in his crude wooden crutches which the driver arranged between the two front seats, then painfully he levered himself in.<br /> 'Thank sir,' he said turning his neck to look at the back and completely out of breath.<br /> 'I am very grateful. Madame, thank you.'<br /> 'The pleasure is ours,' said Nwankwo. 'Where did you get your wound?'<br /> 'At Azumini, sir. On tenth of January.'<br /> 'Never mind. Everything will be all right. We are proud of you boys and will make sure you receive your due reward when it is all over.'<br /> 'I pray God, sir.'<br /> They drove on in silence for the next half-hour or so. Then as the car sped down a slope towards a bridge somebody screamed---perhaps the driver, perhaps the soldier---'They have come!' The screech of the brakes merged into the scream and the shattering of the sky overhead. The doors flew open even before the car had come to a stop and they were fleeing blindly to the bush. Gladys was a little ahead of Nwankwo when they heard through the drowning tumult the soldier's voice crying: 'Please come and open for me!' Vaguely he saw Gladys stop; he pushed past her shouting to her at the same time to come on. Then a high whistle descended like a spear through the chaos and exploded in a vast noise and motion that smashed up everything. A tree he had embraced flung him away through the bush. Then another terrible whistle starting high up and ending again in a monumental crash of the world; and then another, and Nwankwo heard no more.<br /> He woke up to human noises and weeping and the smell and smoke of a charred world. He dragged himself up and staggered towards the source of the sounds.<br /> From afar he saw his driver running towards him in tears and blood. He saw the remains of his car smoking and the entangled remains of the girl and the soldier. And he let out a piercing cry and fell down again.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-87599054244753939662009-03-04T08:01:00.000-08:002009-03-04T08:29:47.952-08:00Fathers and Sons<span style="font-weight: bold;">By: Ernest Hemingway</span><br /><br />THERE had been a sign to detour in the centre of the main street of this town, but cars had obviously gone through, so, believing it was some repair which had been completed, Nicholas Adams drove on through the town along the empty, brick-paved street, stopped by traffic lights that flashed on and off on this traffic-less Sunday, and would be gone next year when the payments on the system were not met; on under the heavy trees of the small town that are a part of your heart if it is your town and you have walked under them, but that are only too heavy, that shut out the sun and that flatten the houses for a stranger; out past the last house and on to the highway that rose and fell straight away ahead with banks of red dirt sliced cleanly away and the secondgrowth timber on both sides. It was not his country but it was the middle of fall and all of this country was good to drive through and to see. The cotton was picked and in the clearings there were patches of corn, some cut with streaks of red sorghum, and, driving easily, his son asleep on the seat by his side, the day's run made, knowing the town he would reach for the night, Nick noticed which cornfields had soy beans or peas in them, how the thickets and the cut-over land lay, where the cabins and houses were in relation to the fields and the thickets; hunting the country in his mind as he went by; sizing up each clearing as to feed and cover and figuring where you would find a covey and which way they would fly.<br /> In shooting quail you must not get between them and their habitual cover, once the dogs have found them, or when they flush they will come pouring at you, some rising steep, some skimming by your ears, whirring into a size you have never seen them in the air; as they pass, the only way being to turn and take them over your shoulder as they go, before they set their wings and angle down into the thicket. Hunting this country for quail as his father taught him, Nicholas Adams started thinking about his father. When he first thought about him it was always the eyes. The big frame, the quick movements, the wide shoulders, the hooked, hawk nose, the beard that covered the weak chin, you never thought about it was always the eyes. They were protected in his head by the formation of the brows; set deep as though a special protection had been devised for some very valuable instrument. They saw much farther and much quicker than the human eye sees and they were the great gift his father had. His father saw as a big-horn ram or as an eagle sees, literally.<br /> He would be standing with his father on one shore of the lake, his own eyes were very good then, and his father would say, 'They've run up the flag.' Nick could not see the flag or the flag pole. 'There,' his father would say, 'it's your sister Dorothy. She's got the flag up and she's walking out on to the dock.'<br /> Nick would look across the lake and he could see the long wooded shore-line, the higher timber behind, the point that guarded the bay, the clear hills of the farm and the white of their cottage in the trees, but he could not see any flag pole, or any dock, only the white of the beach and the curve of the shore.<br /> 'Can you see the sheep on the hill-side toward the point?'<br /> 'Yes.'<br /> They were a whitish patch on the grey-green of the hill.<br /> 'I can count them,' his father said.<br /> Like all men with a faculty that surpasses human requirements, his father was very nervous. Then, too, he was sentimental, and, like most sentimental people, he was both cruel and abused. Also, he had much bad luck, and it was not all of it his own. He had died in a trap that he had helped only a little to set, and they had betrayed him in their various ways before he died. All sentimental people are betrayed so many times. Nick could not write about him yet, although he would, later, but the quail country made him remember him as he was when Nick was a boy and he was very grateful to him for two things: fishing and shooting.<br /> His father was as sound on those two things as he was unsound on sex, for instance, and Nick was glad that it had been that way; for someone has to give you your first gun or the opportunity to get it and use it, and you have to live where there is game or fish if you are to learn about them, and now, at thirty-eight, he loved to fish and to shoot exactly as much as when he first had gone with his father. It was a passion that had never slackened and he was very grateful to his father for bringing him to know it.<br /> While for the other, that his father was not sound about, all the equipment you will ever have is provided and each man learns all there is for him to know about it without advice; and it makes no difference where you live. He remembered very clearly the only two pieces of information his father had given him about that. Once when they were out shooting together Nick shot a red squirrel out of a hemlock tree. The squirrel fell, wounded, and when Nick picked him up bit the boy clean through the ball of the thumb.<br /> 'The dirty little bugger,' Nick said and smacked the squirrel's head against the tree. 'Look how he bit me.'<br /> His father looked and said, 'Suck it out clean and put some iodine on when you get home.'<br /> 'The little bugger,' Nick said.<br /> 'Do you know what a bugger is?' his father asked him.<br /> 'We call anything a bugger,' Nick said.<br /> 'A bugger is a man who has intercourse with animals.'<br /> 'Why?' Nick said.<br /> 'I don't know,' his father said. 'But it is a heinous crime.'<br /> Nick's imagination was both stirred and horrified by this and he thought of various animals but none seemed attractive or practical and that was the sum total of direct sexual knowledge bequeathed him by his father except on one other subject. One morning he read in the paper that Enrico Caruso had been arrested for mashing.<br /> 'What is mashing?'<br /> 'It is one of the most heinous of crimes,' his father answered. Nick's imagination pictured the great tenor doing something strange, bizarre, and heinous with a potato masher to a beautiful lady who looked like the pictures of Anna Held on the inside of cigar boxes. He resolved, with considerable horror, that when he was old enough he would try mashing at least once.<br /> His father had summed up the whole matter by stating that masturbation produced blindness, insanity, and death, while a man who went with prostitutes would contract hideous venereal diseases and that the thing to do was to keep your hands off of people. On the other hand his father had the finest pair of eyes he had ever seen and Nick had loved him very much and for a long time. Now, knowing how it had all been, even remembering the earliest times before things had gone badly was not good remembering.<br /> If he wrote it he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them. But it was still too early for that. There were still too many people. So he decided to think of something else. There was nothing to do about his father and he had thought it all through many times. The handsome job the undertaker had done on his father's face had not blurred in his mind and all the rest of it was quite clear, including the responsibilities. He had complimented the undertaker. The undertaker had not been both proud and smugly pleased. But it was not the undertaker that had given him that last face. The undertaker had only made certain dashingly executed repairs of doubtful artistic merit.<br /> The face had been making itself and being made for a long time. It had modelled fast in the last three years. It was a good story but there were still too many people alive for him to write it.<br /> Nick's own education in those earlier matters had been acquired in the hemlock woods behind the Indian camp. This was reached by a trail which ran from the cottage through the woods to the farm and then by a road which wound through the slashings to the camp. Now if he could feel all of that trail with bare feet. First there was the pine-needle loam through the hemlock woods behind the cottage where the fallen logs crumbled into wood dust and long splintered pieces of wood hung like javelins in the tree that had been struck by lightning. You crossed the creek on a log and if you stepped off there was the black muck of the swamp. You climbed a fence out of the woods and the trail was hard in the sun across the field with cropped grass and sheep sorrel and mullen growing and to the left the quaky bog of the creek bottom where the killdeer plover fed. The spring house was in that creek. Below the barn there was fresh warm manure and the other older manure that was caked dry on top. Then there was another fence and the hard, hot trail from the barn to the house and the hot sandy road that ran down to the woods, crossing the creek, on a bridge this time, where the cat-tails grew that you soaked in kerosene to make jacklights with for spearing fish at night.<br /> Then the main road went off to the left, skirting the woods and climbing the hill, while you went into the woods on the wide clay and shale road, cool under the trees, and broadened for them to skid out the hemlock bark the Indians cut.<br /> The hemlock bark was piled in long rows of stacks, roofed over with more bark, like houses, and the peeled logs lay huge and yellow where the trees had been felled. They left the logs in the woods to rot, they did not even clear away or burn the tops. It was only the bark they wanted for the tannery at Boyne City; hauling it across the lake on the ice in winter, and each year there was less forest and more open, hot, shadeless, weed-grown slashing.<br /> But there was still much forest then, virgin forest where the trees grew high before there were any branches and you walked on the brown, clean, springy-needled ground with no undergrowth and it was cool on the hottest days and they three lay against the trunk of a hemlock wider than two beds are long, with the breeze high in the tops and the cool light that came in patches, and Billy said: 'You want Trudy again?'<br /> 'You want to?'<br /> 'Uh Huh.'<br /> 'Come on.'<br /> 'No, here.'<br /> 'But Billy-'<br /> 'I no mind Billy. He my brother.'<br /> Then afterwards they sat, the three of them, listening for a black squirrel that was in the top branches where they could not see him. They were waiting for him to bark again because when he barked he would jerk his tail and Nick would shoot where he saw any movement. His father gave him only three cartridges a day to hunt with and he had a single-barrel twenty-gauge shotgun with a very long barrel.<br /> 'Son of a bitch never move,' Billy said.<br /> 'You shoot, Nickie. Scare him. We see him jump. Shoot him again,' Trudy said. It was a long speech for her.<br /> 'I've only got two shells,' Nick said.<br /> 'Son of a bitch,' said Billy.<br /> They sat against the tree and were quiet. Nick was feeling hollow and happy.<br /> 'Eddie says he going to come some night sleep in bed with you sister Dorothy.'<br /> 'What?'<br /> 'He said.'<br /> Trudy nodded.<br /> 'That's all he want do,' she said. Eddie was their older half-brother. He was seventeen.<br /> 'If Eddie Gilby ever comes at night and even speaks to Dorothy you know what I'd do to him? I'd kill him like this.' Nick cocked the gun and hardly taking aim pulled the trigger, blowing a hole as big as your hand in the head or belly of that half-breed bastard Eddie Gilby. 'Like that. I'd kill him like that.'<br /> 'He better not come then,' Trudy said. She put her hand in Nick's pocket.<br /> 'He better watch out plenty,' said Billy.<br /> 'He's big bluff,' Trudy was exploring with her hand in Nick's pocket. 'But don't you kill him. You get plenty trouble.'<br /> 'I'd kill him like that,' Nick said. Eddie Gilby lay on the ground with all his chest shot away. Nick put his foot on him proudly.<br /> 'I'd scalp him,' he said happily.<br /> 'No,' said Trudy. 'That's dirty.'<br /> 'I'd scalp him and send it to his mother.'<br /> 'His mother dead,' Trudy said. 'Don't you kill him, Nickie. Don't you kill him for me.'<br /> 'After I scalped him I'd throw him to the dogs.'<br /> Billy was very depressed. 'He better watch out,' he said gloomily.<br /> 'They'd tear him to pieces,' Nick said, pleased with the picture. Then, having scalped that half-breed renegade and standing, watching the dogs tear him, his face unchanging, he fell backward against the tree, held tight around the neck, Trudy holding, choking him, and crying, 'No kill him! No kill him! No kill him! No. No. No. Nickie. Nickie, Nickie!'<br /> 'What's the matter with you?'<br /> 'No kill him.'<br /> 'I got to kill him.'<br /> 'He just a big bluff.'<br /> 'All right,' Nickie said. 'I won't kill him unless he comes around the house. Let go of me.'<br /> 'That's good,' Trudy said, 'You want to do anything now? I feel good now.'<br /> 'If Billy goes away,' Nick had killed Eddie Gilby, then pardoned him his life, and he was a man now.<br /> 'You go, Billy. You hang around all the time. Go on.'<br /> 'Son a bitch,' Billy said. 'I get tired this. What we come? Hunt or what?'<br /> 'You can take the gun. There's one shell.'<br /> 'All right. I get a big black one all right.'<br /> 'I'll holler,' Nick said.<br /> Then, later, it was a long time after and Billy was still away.<br /> 'You think we make a baby?' Trudy folded her brown legs together happily and rubbed against him. Something inside Nick had gone a long way away.<br /> 'I don't think so,' he said.<br /> 'Make plenty baby what the hell.'<br /> They heard Billy shoot.<br /> 'I wonder if he got one.'<br /> 'Don't care,' said Trudy.<br /> Billy came through the trees. He had the gun over his shoulder and he held a black squirrel by the front paws.<br /> 'Look,' he said. 'Bigger than a cat. You all through?'<br /> 'Where'd you get him?'<br /> 'Over there. Saw him jump first.'<br /> 'Got to go home,' Nick said.<br /> 'No,' said Trudy.<br /> 'I got to get there for supper.'<br /> 'All right.'<br /> 'Want to hunt to-morrow?'<br /> 'All right.'<br /> 'You can have the squirrel.'<br /> 'All right,'<br /> 'Come out after supper?'<br /> 'No.'<br /> 'How you feel?'<br /> 'Good,'<br /> 'All right.'<br /> 'Give me kiss on the face,' said Trudy.<br /> Now, as he rode along the highway in the car and it was getting dark, Nick was all through thinking about his father.<br /> The end of the day never made him think of him. The end of the day had always belonged to Nick alone and he never felt right unless he was alone at it. His father came back to him in the fall of the year, or in the early spring when there had been jacksnipe on the prairie, or when he saw shocks of corn, or when he saw a lake, or if he ever saw a horse and buggy, or when he saw, or heard, wild geese, or in a duck blind; remembering the time an eagle dropped through the whirling snow to strike a canvas-covered decoy, rising, his wings beating, the talons caught in the canvas. His father was with him, suddenly, in deserted orchards and in new-ploughed fields, in thickets, on small hills, or when going through dead grass, whenever splitting wood or hauling water, by grist mills, cider mills and dams and always with open fires. The towns he lived in were not towns his father knew. After he was fifteen he had shared nothing with him.<br /> His father had frost in his beard in cold weather and in hot weather he sweated very much. He liked to work in the sun on the farm because he did not have to and he loved manual work, which Nick did not. Nick loved his father but hated the smell of him and once when he had to wear a suit of his father's underwear that had gotten too small for his father it made him feel sick and he took it off and put it under two stones in the creek and said that he had lost it. He had told his father how it was when his father had made him put it on but his father had said it was freshly washed. It had been, too. When Nick had asked him to smell of it his father sniffed at it indignantly and said that it was clean and fresh.<br /> When Nick came home from fishing without it and said he lost it he was whipped for lying.<br /> Afterwards he had sat inside the woodshed with the door open, his shotgun loaded and cocked, looking across at his father sitting on the screen porch reading the paper, and thought, 'I can blow him to hell. I can kill him.' Finally he felt his anger go out of him and he felt a little sick about it being the gun that his father had given him. Then he had gone to the Indian camp, walking there in the dark, to get rid of the smell. There was only one person in his family that he liked the smell of; one sister. All the others he avoided all contact with. That sense blunted when he started to smoke.<br /> It was a good thing. It was good for a bird dog but it did not help a man.<br /> 'What was it like, Papa, when you were a little boy and used to hunt with the Indians?'<br /> 'I don't know,' Nick was startled. He had not even noticed the boy was awake. He looked at him sitting beside him on the seat. He had felt quite alone but this boy had been with him. He wondered for how long. 'We used to go all day to hunt black squirrels,' he said. 'My father only gave me three shells a day because he said that would teach me to hunt and it wasn't good for a boy to go banging around. I went with a boy named Billy Gilby and his sister Trudy. We used to go out nearly every day all one summer.'<br /> 'Those are funny names for Indians.'<br /> 'Yes, aren't they,' Nick said.<br /> 'But tell me what they were like.'<br /> 'They were Ojibways,' Nick said. 'And they were very nice.'<br /> 'But what were they like to be with?'<br /> 'It's hard to say,' Nick Adams said. Could you say she did first what no one has ever done better and mention plump brown legs, flat belly, hard little breasts, well holding arms, quick searching tongue, the flat eyes, the good taste of mouth, then uncomfortably, tightly, sweetly, moistly, lovely, tightly, achingly, fully, finally, unendingly, never-endingly, never-to-endingly, suddenly ended, the great bird flown like an owl in the twilight, only in daylight in the woods and hemlock needles stuck against your belly. So that when you go in a place where Indians have lived you smell them gone and the empty pain killer bottles and the flies that buzz do not kill the sweetgrass smell, the smoke smell and that other like a fresh cased marten skin. Nor any jokes about them nor old squaws take that away. Nor the sick sweet smell they get to have. Nor what they did finally. It wasn't how they ended.<br /> They all ended the same. Long time ago good. Now no good.<br /> And about the other. When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first. He could thank his father for that.<br /> 'You might not like them,' Nick said to the boy. 'But I think you would.'<br /> 'And my grandfather lived with them too when he was a boy, didn't he?'<br /> 'Yes. When I asked him what they were like he said that he had many friends among them.'<br /> 'Will I ever live with them?'<br /> 'I don't know,' Nick said. 'That's up to you.'<br /> 'How old will I be when I get a shotgun and can hunt by myself?'<br /> 'Twelve years old if I see you are careful.'<br /> 'I wish I was twelve now.'<br /> 'You will be, soon enough.'<br /> 'What was my grandfather like? I can't remember him except that he gave me an air rifle and an American flag when I came over from France that time. What was he like?'<br /> 'He's hard to describe. He was a great hunter and fisherman and he had wonderful eyes.'<br /> 'Was he greater than you?'<br /> 'He was a much better shot and his father was a great wing shot too.'<br /> 'I'll bet he wasn't better than you.'<br /> 'Oh, yes he was. He shot very quickly and beautifully. I'd rather see him shoot than any man I ever knew. He was always very disappointed in the way I shot.'<br /> 'Why do we never go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather?'<br /> 'We live in a different part of the country. It's a long way from here.'<br /> 'In France that wouldn't make any difference. In France we'd go. I think I ought to go to pray at the tomb of my grandfather.'<br /> 'Some time we'll go.'<br /> 'I hope we won't live somewhere so that I can never go to pray at your tomb when you are dead.'<br /> 'We'll have to arrange it.'<br /> 'Don't you think we might all be buried at a convenient place? We could all be buried in France. That would be fine.'<br /> 'I don't want to be buried in France,' Nick said.<br /> 'Well, then, we'll have to get some convenient place in America. Couldn't we all be buried out at the ranch?'<br /> 'That's an idea.'<br /> 'Then I could stop and pray at the tomb of my grandfather on the way to the ranch.'<br /> 'You're awfully practical.'<br /> 'Well, I don't feel good never to have even visited the tomb of my grandfather.'<br /> 'We'll have to go,' Nick said. 'I can see we'll have to go.'Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-76961532964972129932009-03-04T07:59:00.001-08:002009-03-04T08:29:16.772-08:00Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes<span style="font-weight: bold;">By : JD Salinger</span><br /><br />WHEN the phone rang, the gray-haired man asked the girl, with quite some little deference, if she would rather for any reason he didn't answer it. The girl heard him as if from a distance, and turned her face toward him, one eye--on the side of the light--closed tight, her open eye very, however disingenuously, large, and so blue as to appear almost violet. The grayhaired man asked her to hurry up, and she raised up on her right forearm just quickly enough so that the movement didn't quite look perfunctory. She cleared her hair back from her forehead with her left hand and said, "God. I don't know. I mean what do you think?" The gray-haired man said he didn't see that it made a helluva lot of difference one way or the other, and slipped his left hand under the girl's supporting arm, above the elbow, working his fingers up, making room for them between the warm surfaces of her upper arm and chest wall. He reached for the phone with his right hand. To reach it without groping, he had to raise himself somewhat higher, which caused the back of his head to graze a comer of the lampshade. In that instant, the light was particularly, if rather vividly, flattering to his gray, mostly white, hair. Though in disarrangement at that moment, it had obviously been freshly cut-or, rather, freshly maintained. The neckline and temples had been trimmed conventionally close, but the sides and top had been left rather more than just longish, and were, in fact, a trifle "distinguished-looking."<br /> "Hello?" he said resonantly into the phone. The girl stayed propped up on her forearm and watched him. Her eyes, more just open than alert or speculative, reflected chiefly their own size and color.<br /> A man's voice--stone dead, yet somehow rudely, almost obscenely quickened for the occasion--came through at the other end: "Lee? I wake you?"<br /> The gray-haired man glanced briefly left, at the girl. "Who's that?" he asked. "Arthur?"<br /> "Yeah--I wake you?"<br /> "No, no. I'm in bed, reading. Anything wrong?"<br /> "You sure I didn't wake you? Honest to God?"<br /> "No, no--absolutely," the gray-haired man said. "As a matter of fact, I've been averaging about four lousy hours--"<br /> "The reason I called, Lee, did you happen to notice when Joanie was leaving? Did you happen to notice if she left with the Ellenbogens, by any chance?"<br /> The gray-haired man looked left again, but high this time, away from the girl, who was now watching him rather like a young, blue-eyed Irish policeman. "No, I didn't, Arthur," he said, his eyes on the far, dim end of the room, where the wall met the ceiling. "Didn't she leave with you?"<br /> "No. Christ, no. You didn't see her leave at all, then?"<br /> "Well, no, as a matter of fact, I didn't, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. "Actually, as a matter of fact, I didn't see a bloody thing all evening. The minute I got in the door, I got myself involved in one long Jesus of a session with that French poop, Viennese poop--whatever the hell he was. Every bloody one of these foreign guys keep an eye open for a little free legal advice. Why? What's up? Joanie lost?"<br /> "Oh, Christ. Who knows? I don't know. You know her when she gets all tanked up and rarin' to go. I don't know. She may have just--"<br /> "You call the Ellenbogens?" the gray-haired man asked.<br /> "Yeah. They're not home yet. I don't know. Christ, I'm not even sure she left with them. I know one thing. I know one goddam thing. I'm through beating my brains out. I mean it. I really mean it this time. I'm through. Five years. Christ."<br /> "All right, try to take it a little easy, now, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. "In the first place, if I know the Ellenbogens, they probably all hopped in a cab and went down to the Village for a couple of hours. All three of 'em'll probably barge--"<br /> "I have a feeling she went to work on some bastard in the kitchen. I just have a feeling. She always starts necking some bastard in the kitchen when she gets tanked up. I'm through. I swear to God I mean it this time. Five goddam-"<br /> "Where are you now, Arthur?" the gray-haired man asked. "Home?"<br /> "Yeah. Home. Home sweet home. Christ."<br /> "Well, just try to take it a little--What are ya--drunk, or what?"<br /> "I don't know. How the hell do I know?"<br /> "All right, now, listen. Relax. Just relax," the grayhaired man said. "You know the Ellenbogens, for Chrissake. What probably happened, they probably missed their last train. All three of 'em'll probably barge in on you any minute, full of witty, night-club--"<br /> "They drove in."<br /> "How do you know?"<br /> "Their baby-sitter. We've had some scintillating goddam conversations. We're close as hell. We're like two goddam peas in a pod."<br /> "All right. All right. So what? Will ya sit tight and relax, now?" said the gray-haired man. "All three of 'em'll probably waltz in on you any minute. Take my word. You know Leona. I don't know what the hell it is--they all get this god-awful Connecticut gaiety when they get in to New York. You know that."<br /> "Yeah. I know. I know. I don't know, though."<br /> "Certainly you do. Use your imagination. The two of 'em probably dragged Joanie bodily--"<br /> "Listen. Nobody ever has to drag Joanie anywhere. Don't gimme any of that dragging stuff."<br /> "Nobody's giving you any dragging stuff, Arthur," the gray-haired man said quietly.<br /> "I know, I know! Excuse me. Christ, I'm losing my mind. Honest to God, you sure I didn't wake you?"<br /> "I'd tell you if you had, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. Absently, he took his left hand out from between the girl's upper arm and chest wall. "Look, Arthur. You want my advice?" he said. He took the telephone cord between his fingers, just under the transmitter. "I mean this, now. You want some advice?"<br /> "Yeah. I don't know. Christ, I'm keeping you up. Why don't I just go cut my--"<br /> "Listen to me a minute," the gray-haired man said. "First--I mean this, now--get in bed and relax. Make yourself a nice, big nightcap, and get under the--"<br /> "Nightcap! Are you kidding? Christ, I've killed about a quart in the last two goddam hours. Nightcap! I'm so plastered now I can hardly--"<br /> "All right. All right. Get in bed, then," the grayhaired man said. "And relax--ya hear me? Tell the truth. Is it going to do any good to sit around and stew?"<br /> "Yeah, I know. I wouldn't even worry, for Chrissake, but you can't trust her! I swear to God. I swear to God you can't. You can trust her about as far as you can throw a--I don't know what. Aaah, what's the use? I'm losing my goddam mind."<br /> "All right. Forget it, now. Forget it, now. Will ya do me a favor and try to put the whole thing out of your mind?" the gray-haired man said. "For all you know, you're making--I honestly think you're making a mountain--"<br /> "You know what I do? You know what I do? I'm ashameda tell ya, but you know what I very nearly goddam do every night? When I get home? You want to know?"<br /> "Arthur, listen, this isn't---"<br /> "Wait a second--I'll tell ya, God damn it. I practically have to keep myself from opening every goddam closet door in the apartment--I swear to God. Every night I come home, I half expect to find a bunch of bastards hiding all over the place. Elevator boys. Delivery boys. Cops--"<br /> "All right. All right. Let's try to take it a little easy, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. He glanced abruptly to his right, where a cigarette, lighted some time earlier in the evening, was balanced on an ashtray. It obviously had gone out, though, and he didn't pick it up. "In the first place," he said into the phone, "I've told you many, many times, Arthur, that's exactly where you make your biggest mistake. You know what you do? Would you like me to tell you what you do? You go out of your way--I mean this, now--you actually go out of your way to torture yourself. As a matter of fact, you actually inspire Joanie-" He broke off. "You're bloody lucky she's a wonderful kid. I mean it. You give that kid absolutely no credit for having any good taste--or brains, for Chrissake, for that matter--"<br /> "Brains! Are you kidding? She hasn't got any goddam brains! She's an animal!"<br /> The gray-haired man, his nostrils dilating, appeared to take a fairly deep breath. "We're all animals," he said. "Basically, we're all animals."<br /> "Like hell we are. I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal."<br /> "Look, Arthur. This isn't getting us--"<br /> "Brains. Jesus, if you knew how funny that was. She thinks she's a goddam intellectual. That's the funny part, that's the hilarious part. She reads the theatrical page, and she watches television till she's practically blind--so she's an intellectual. You know who I'm married to? You want to know who I'm married to? I'm married to the greatest living undeveloped, undiscovered actress, novelist, psychoanalyst, and all-around goddam unappreciated celebrity-genius in New York. You didn't know that, didja? Christ, it's so funny I could cut my throat. Madame Bovary at Columbia Extension School. Madame--"<br /> "Who?" asked the gray-haired man, sounding annoyed.<br /> "Madame Bovary takes a course in Television Appreciation. God, if you knew how--"<br /> "All right, all right. You realize this isn't getting us anyplace," the gray-haired man said. He turned and gave the girl a sign, with two fingers near his mouth, that he wanted a cigarette. "In the first place," he said, into the phone, "for a helluvan intelligent guy, you're about as tactless as it's humanly possible to be." He straightened his back so that the girl could reach behind him for the cigarettes. "I mean that. It shows up in your private life, it shows up in your--"<br /> "Brains. Oh, God, that kills me! Christ almightyl Did you ever hear her describe anybody--some man, I mean? Sometime when you haven't anything to do, do me a favor and get her to describe some man for you. She describes every man she sees as `terribly attractive.' It can be the oldest, crummiest, greasiest-- "All right, Arthur," the gray-haired man said sharply. "This is getting us nowhere. But nowhere." He took a lighted cigarette from the girl. She had lit two. "Just incidentally," he said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils, "how'd you make out today?"<br /> "What?"<br /> "How'd you make out today?" the gray-haired man repeated. "How'd the case go?"<br /> "Oh, Christ! I don't know. Lousy. About two minutes before I'm all set to start my summation, the attorney for the plaintiff, Lissberg, trots in this crazy chambermaid with a bunch of bedsheets as evidence--bedbug stains all over them. Christ!"<br /> "So what happened? You lose?" asked the grayhaired man, taking another drag on his cigarette.<br /> "You know who was on the bench? Mother Vittorio. What the hell that guy has against me, I'll never know. I can't even open my mouth and he jumps all over me. You can't reason with a guy like that. It's impossible."<br /> The gray-haired man turned his head to see what the girl was doing. She had picked up the ashtray and was putting it between them. "You lose, then, or what?" he said into the phone.<br /> "What?"<br /> "I said, Did you lose?"<br /> "Yeah. I was gonna tell you about it. I didn't get a chance at the party, with all the ruckus. You think Junior'll hit the ceiling? Not that I give a good goddam, but what do you think? Think he will?"<br /> With his left hand, the gray-haired man shaped the ash of his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. "I don't think he'll necessarily hit the ceiling, Arthur," he said quietly. "Chances are very much in favor, though, that he's not going to be overjoyed about it. You know how long we've handled those three bloody hotels? Old man Shanley himself started the whole--"<br /> "I know, I know. Junior's told me about it at least fifty times. It's one of the most beautiful stories I ever heard in my life. All right, so I lost the goddam case. In the first place, it wasn't my fault. First, this lunatic Vittorio baits me all through the trial. Then this moron chambermaid starts passing out sheets full of bedbug--"<br /> "Nobody's saying it's your fault, Arthur," the grayhaired man said. "You asked me if I thought Junior would hit the ceiling. I simply gave you an honest--"<br /> "I know--I know that.... I don't know. What the hell. I may go back in the Army anyway. I tell you about that?"<br /> The gray-haired man turned his head again toward the girl, perhaps to show her how forbearing, even stoic, his countenance was. But the girl missed seeing it. She had just overturned the ashtray with her knee and was rapidly, with her fingers, brushing the spilled ashes into a little pick-up pile; her eyes looked up at him a second too late. "No, you didn't, Arthur," he said into the phone.<br /> "Yeah. I may. I don't know yet. I'm not crazy about the idea, naturally, and I won't go if I can possibly avoid it. But I may have to. I don't know. At least, it's oblivion. If they gimme back my little helmet and my big, fat desk and my nice, big mosquito net it might not--"<br /> "I'd like to beat some sense into that head of yours, boy, that's what I'd like to do," the gray-haired man said. "For a helluvan--For a supposedly intelligent guy, you talk like an absolute child. And I say that in all sincerity. You let a bunch of minor little things snowball to an extent that they get so bloody paramount in your mind that you're absolutely unfit for any--"<br /> "I shoulda left her. You know that? I should've gone through with it last summer, when I really had the ball rolling--you know that? You know why I didn't? You want to know why I didn't?"<br /> "Arthur. For Chrissake. This is getting us exactly nowhere."<br /> "Wait a second. Lemme tellya why! You want to know why I didn't? I can tellya exactly why. Because I felt sorry for her. That's the whole simple truth. I felt sorry for her."<br /> "Well, I don't know. I mean that's out of my jurisdiction," the gray-haired man said. "It seems to me, though, that the one thing you seem to forget is that Joanie's a grown woman. I don't know, but it seems to me--"<br /> "Grown woman! You crazy? She's a grown child, for Chrissake! Listen, I'll be shaving--listen to this--I'll be shaving, and all of a sudden she'll call me from way the hell the other end of the apartment. I'll go see what's the matter--right in the middle of shaving, lather all over my goddam face. You know what she'll want? She'll want to ask me if I think she has a good mind. I swear to God. She's pathetic, I tellya. I watch her when she's asleep, and I know what I'm talkin' about. Believe me."<br /> "Well, that's something you know better than--I mean that's out of my jurisdiction," the gray-haired man said. "The point is, God damn it, you don't do anything at all constructive to--"<br /> "We're mismated, that's all. That's the whole simple story. We're just mismated as hell. You know what she needs? She needs some big silent bastard to just walk over once in a while and knock her out cold--then go back and finish reading his paper. That's what she needs. I'm too goddam weak for her. I knew it when we got married--I swear to God I did. I mean you're a smart bastard, you've never been married, but every now and then, before anybody gets married, they get these flashes of what it's going to be like after they're married. I ignored 'em. I ignored all my goddam flashes. I'm weak. That's the whole thing in a nutshell."<br /> "You're not weak. You just don't use your head," the gray-haired man said, accepting a freshly lighted cigarette from the girl.<br /> "Certainly I'm weak! Certainly I'm weak! God damn it, I know whether I'm weak or not! If I weren't weak, you don't think I'd've let everything get all--Aah, what's the usea talking? Certainly I'm weak... God, I'm keeping you awake all night. Why don't you hang the hell up on me? I mean it. Hang up on me."<br /> "I'm not going to hang up on you, Arthur. I'd like to help you, if it's humanly possible," the gray-haired man said. "Actually, you're your own worst--"<br /> "She doesn't respect me. She doesn't even love me, for God's sake. Basically--in the last analysis--I don't love her any more, either. I don't know. I do and I don't. It varies. It fluctuates. Christ! Every time I get all set to put my foot down, we have dinner out, for some reason, and I meet her somewhere and she comes in with these goddam white gloves on or something. I don't know. Or I start thinking about the first time we drove up to New Haven for the Princeton game. We had a flat right after we got off the Parkway, and it was cold as hell, and she held the flashlight while I fixed the goddam thing--You know what I mean. I don't know. Or I start thinking about--Christ, it's embarrassing--I start thinking about this goddam poem I sent her when we first started goin' around together. `Rose my color is. and white, Pretty mouth and green my eyes.' Christ, it's embarrassing--it used to remind me of her. She doesn't have green eyes--she has eyes like goddam sea shells, for Chrissake--but it reminded me anyway... I don't know. What's the usea talking? I'm losing my mind. Hang up on me, why don't you? I mean it."<br /> The gray-haired man cleared his throat and said, "I have no intention of hanging up on you, Arthur. There's just one--"<br /> "She bought me a suit once. With her own money. I tell you about that?"<br /> "No, I--"<br /> "She just went into I think Tripler's and bought it. I didn't even go with her. I mean she has some goddam nice traits. The funny thing was it wasn't a bad fit. I just had to have it taken in a little bit around the seat--the pants--and the length. I mean she has some goddam nice traits."<br /> The gray-haired man listened another moment.<br /> Then, abruptly, he turned toward the girl. The look he gave her, though only glancing, fully informed her what was suddenly going on at the other end of the phone. "Now, Arthur. Listen. That isn't going to do any good," he said into the phone. "That isn't going to do any good. I mean it. Now, listen. I say this in all sincerity. Willya get undressed and get in bed, like a good guy? And relax? Joanie'll probably be there in about two minutes. You don't want her to see you like that, do ya? The bloody Ellenbogens'll probably barge in with her. You don't want the whole bunch of 'em to see you like that, do ya?" He listened. "Arthur? You hear me?"<br /> "God, I'm keeping you awake all night. Everything I do, I--"<br /> "You're not keeping me awake all night," the grayhaired man said. "Don't even think of that. I've already told you, I've been averaging about four hours' sleep a night. What I would like to do, though, if it's at all humanly possible, I'd like to help you, boy." He listened. "Arthur? You there?"<br /> "Yeah. I'm here. Listen. I've kept you awake all night anyway. Could I come over to your place for a drink? Wouldja mind?"<br /> The gray-haired man straightened his back and placed the flat of his free hand on the top of his head, and said, "Now, do you mean?"<br /> "Yeah. I mean if it's all right with you. I'll only stay a minute. I'd just like to sit down somewhere and--I don't know. Would it be all right?"<br /> "Yeah, but the point is I don't think you should, Arthur," the gray-haired man said, lowering his hand from his head. "I mean you're more than welcome to come, but I honestly think you should just sit tight and relax till Joanie waltzes in. I honestly do. What you want to be, you want to be right there on the spot when she waltzes in. Am I right, or not?"<br /> "Yeah. I don't know. I swear to God, I don't know."<br /> "Well, I do, I honestly do," the gray-haired man said. "Look. Why don't you hop in bed now, and relax, and then later, if you feel like it, give me a ring. I mean if you feel like talking. And don't worry. That's the main thing. Hear me? Willya do that now?"<br /> "All right."<br /> The gray-haired man continued for a moment to hold the phone to his ear, then lowered it into its cradle.<br /> "What did he say?" the girl immediately asked him. He picked his cigarette out of the ashtray--that is, selected it from an accumulation of smoked and halfsmoked cigarettes. He dragged on it and said, "He wanted to come over here for a drink."<br /> "God! What'd you say?" said the girl.<br /> "You heard me," the gray-haired man said, and looked at her. "You could hear me. Couldn't you?" He squashed out his cigarette.<br /> "You were wonderful. Absolutely marvellous," the girl said, watching him. "God, I feel like a dog!"<br /> "Well," the gray-haired man said, "it's a tough situation. I don't know how marvellous I was."<br /> "You were. You were wonderful," the girl said. "I'm limp. I'm absolutely limp. Look at me!"<br /> The gray-haired man looked at her. "Well, actually, it's an impossible situation," he said. "I mean the whole thing's so fantastic it isn't even--"<br /> "Darling- Excuse me," the girl said quickly, and leaned forward. "I think you're on fire." She gave the back of his hand a short, brisk, brushing stroke with the flats of her fingers. "No. It was just an ash." She leaned back. "No, you were marvellous," she said. "God, I feel like an absolute dog!"<br /> "Well, it's a very, very tough situation. The guy's obviously going through absolute--"<br /> The phone suddenly rang.<br /> The gray-haired man said "Christ!" but picked it up before the second ring. "Hello?" he said into it.<br /> "Lee? Were you asleep?"<br /> "No, no."<br /> "Listen, I just thought you'd want to know. Joanie just barged in."<br /> "What?" said the gray-haired man, and bridged his left hand over his eyes, though the light was behind him.<br /> "Yeah. She just barged in. About ten seconds after I spoke to you. I just thought I'd give you a ring while she's in the john. Listen, thanks a million, Lee. I mean it--you know what I mean. You weren't asleep, were ya?"<br /> "No, no. I was just--No, no," the gray-haired man said, leaving his fingers bridged over his eyes. He cleared his throat.<br /> "Yeah. What happened was, apparently Leona got stinking and then had a goddam crying jag, and Bob wanted Joanie to go out and grab a drink with them somewhere and iron the thing out. I don't know. You know. Very involved. Anyway, so she's home. What a rat race. Honest to God, I think it's this goddam New York. What I think maybe we'll do, if everything goes along all right, we'll get ourselves a little place in Connecticut maybe. Not too far out, necessarily, but far enough that we can lead a normal goddam life. I mean she's crazy about plants and all that stuff. She'd probably go mad if she had her own goddam garden and stuff. Know what I mean? I mean--except you--who do we know in New York except a bunch of neurotics? It's bound to undermine even a normal person sooner or later. Know what I mean?"<br /> The gray-haired man didn't give an answer. His eyes, behind the bridge of his hand, were closed. "Anyway, I'm gonna talk to her about it tonight. Or tomorrow, maybe. She's still a little under the weather. I mean she's a helluva good kid basically, and if we have a chance to straighten ourselves out a little bit, we'd be goddam stupid not to at least have a go at it. While I'm at it, I'm also gonna try to straighten out this lousy bedbug mess, too. I've been thinking. I was just wondering, Lee. You think if I went in and talked to Junior personally, I could--"<br /> "Arthur, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate--"<br /> "I mean I don't want you to think I just called you back or anything because I'm worried about my goddam job or anything. I'm not. I mean basically, for Chrissake, I couldn't care less. I just thought if I could straighten Junior out without beating my brains out, I'd be a goddam fool--"<br /> "Listen, Arthur," the gray-haired man interrupted, taking his hand away from his face, "I have a helluva headache all of a sudden. I don't know where I got the bloody thing from. You mind if we cut this short? I'll talk to you in the morning--all right?" He listened for another moment, then hung up.<br /> Again the girl immediately spoke to him, but he didn't answer her. He picked a burning cigarette--the girl's--out of the ashtray and started to bring it to his mouth, but it slipped out of his fingers. The girl tried to help him retrieve it before anything was burned, but he told her to just sit still, for Chrissake, and she pulled back her hand.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-86694809562860474592009-03-04T07:52:00.000-08:002009-03-04T08:30:23.457-08:00Shingles for the Lord<span style="font-weight: bold;">By : William Faulkner</span><br /><br /><br />PAP GOT UP a good hour before daylight and caught the mule and rid down to Killegrews' to borrow the froe and maul. He ought to been back with it in forty minutes. But the sun had rose and I had done milked and fed and was eating my breakfast when he got back, with the mule not only in a lather but right on the edge of the thumps too.<br /><br />"Fox hunting," he said. "Fox hunting. A seventy-year-old man, with both feet and one knee, too, already in the grave, squatting all night on a hill and calling himself listening to a fox race that he couldn't even hear unless they had come right up onto the same log he was setting on and bayed into his ear trumpet. Give me my breakfast," he told maw.<br /><br />"Whitfield is standing there right this minute, straddle of that board tree with his watch in his hand."<br /><br />And he was. We rid on past the church, and there was not only Solon Quick's school-bus truck but Reverend Whitfield's old mare too. We tied the mule to a sapling and hung our dinner bucket on a limb, and with pap toting Killegrew's froe and maul and the wedges and me toting our ax, we went on to the board tree where Solon and Homer Bookwright, with their froes and mauls and axes and wedges, was setting on two upended cuts, and Whitfield was standing jest like pap said, in his boiled shirt and his black hat and pants and necktie, holding his watch in his hand. It was gold and in the morning sunlight it looked big as a full-growed squash.<br /><br />"You're late!" he said.<br /><br />So pap told again about how Old Man Killegrew had been off fox hunting all night, and nobody at home to lend him the froe but Mrs. Killegrew and the cook. And naturally, the cook wasn't going to lend none of Killegrew's tools out, and Mrs. Killegrew was worser deaf than even Killegrew. If you was to run in and tell her the house was afire, she would jest keep on rocking and say she thought so, too, unless she began to holler back to the cook to turn the dogs loose before you could even open your mouth.<br /><br />"You could have gone yesterday and borrowed the froe," Whitfield said. "You have known for a month now that you had promised this one day out of a whole summer toward putting a roof on the house of God."<br /><br />"We ain't but two hours late," pap said. "I reckon the Lord will forgive it. He ain't interested in time, nohow. He's interested in salvation."<br /><br />Whitfield never even waited for pap to finish. It looked to me like he even got taller, thundering down at pap like a cloudburst. "He ain't interested in neither! Why should He be, when He owns them both? And why He should turn around for the poor, mizzling souls of men that can't even borrow tools in time to replace the shingles on His church, I don't know either. Maybe it's just because He made them. Maybe He just said to Himself: 'I made them; I don't know why. But since I did, I Godfrey, I'll roll My sleeves up and drag them into glory whether they will or no!'"<br /><br />But that wasn't here nor there either now, and I reckon he knowed it, jest like he knowed there wasn't going to be nothing atall here as long as he stayed. So he put the watch back into his pocket and motioned Solon and Homer up, and we all taken off our hats except him while he stood there with his face raised into the sun and his eyes shut and his eyebrows looking like a big iron-gray caterpillar lying along the edge of a cliff. "Lord," he said, "make them good straight shingles to lay smooth, and let them split out easy; they're for You," and opened his eyes and looked at us again, mostly at pap, and went and untied his mare and dumb up slow and stiff, like old men do, and rid away.<br /><br />Pap put down the froe and maul and laid the three wedges in a neat row on the ground and taken up the ax.<br /><br />"Well, men," he said, "let's get started. We're already late."<br /><br />"Me and Homer ain't," Solon said. "We was here." This time him and Homer didn't set on the cuts. They squatted on their heels. Then I seen that Homer was whittling on a stick. I hadn't noticed it before. "I make it two hours and a little over," Solon said. "More or less."<br /><br />Pap was still about half stooped over, holding the ax. "It's nigher one," he said. "But call it two for the sake of the argument. What about it?"<br /><br />"What argument?" Homer said.<br /><br />"All right," pap said. "Two hours then. What about it?"<br /><br />"Which is three man-hour units a hour, multiplied by two hours," Solon said. "Or a total of six work units." When the WPA first come to Yoknapatawpha County and started to giving out jobs and grub and mattresses, Solon went in to Jefferson to get on it. He would drive his school-bus truck the twenty-two miles in to town every morning and come back that night. He done that for almost a week before he found out he would not only have to sign his farm off into somebody else's name, he couldn't even own and run the school bus that he had built himself. So he come back that night and never went back no more, and since then hadn't nobody better mention WPA to him unless they aimed to fight, too, though every now and then he would turn up with something all figured down into work units like he done now. "Six units short."<br /><br />"Four of which you and Homer could have already worked out while you was setting here waiting on me," pap said.<br /><br />"Except that we didn't!" Solon said. "We promised Whitfield two units of twelve three-unit hours toward getting some new shingles on the church roof. We been here ever since sunup, waiting for the third unit to show up, so we could start. You don't seem to kept up with these modern ideas about work that's been flooding and uplifting the country in the last few years."<br /><br />"What modren ideas?" pap said. "I didn't know there was but one idea about work until it is done, it ain't done, and when it is done, it is."<br /><br />Homer made another long, steady whittle on the stick. His knife was sharp as a razor.<br /><br />Solon taken out his snuffbox and filled the top and tilted the snuff into his lip and offered the box to Homer, and Homer shaken his head, and Solon put the top back on the box and put the box back into his pocket.<br /><br />"So," pap said, "jest because I had to wait two hours for a old seventy-year man to get back from fox hunting that never had no more business setting out in the woods all night than he would a had setting all night in a highway juke joint, we all three have got to come back here tomorrow to finish them two hours that you and Homer..."<br /><br />"I ain't," Solon said. "I don't know about Homer. I promised Whitfield one day. I was here at sunup to start it. When the sun goes down, I will consider I have done finished it."<br /><br />"I see," pap said. "I see. It's me that's got to come back. By myself. I got to break into a full morning to make up them two hours that you and Homer spent resting. I got to spend two hours of the next day making up for the two hours of the day before that you and Homer never even worked."<br /><br />"It's going to more than jest break into a morning," Solon said. "It's going to wreck it. There's six units left over. Six one-man-hour units. Maybe you can work twice as fast as me and Homer put together and finish them in four hours, but I don't believe you can work three times as fast and finish in two."<br /><br />Pap was standing up now. He was breathing hard. We could hear him. "So," he said. "So." He swung the ax and druv the blade into one of the cuts and snatched it up onto its flat end, ready to split. "So I'm to be penalized a half a day of my own time, from my own work that's waiting for me at home right this minute, to do six hours more work than the work you fellers lacked two hours of even doing atall, purely and simply because I am jest a average hard-working farmer trying to do the best he can, instead of a durn froe-owning millionaire named Quick or Bookwright."<br /><br />They went to work then, splitting the cuts into bolts and riving the bolts into shingles for Tull and Snopes and the others that had promised for tomorrow to start nailing onto the church roof when they finished pulling the old shingles off. They set flat on the ground in a kind of circle, with their legs spraddled out on either side of the propped-up bolt, Solon and Homer working light and easy and steady as two clocks ticking, but pap making every lick of hisn like he was killing a moccasin. If he had jest swung the maul half as fast as he swung it hard, he would have rove as many shingles as Solon and Homer together, swinging the maul up over his head and holding it there for what looked like a whole minute sometimes and then swinging it down onto the blade of the froe, and not only a shingle flying off every lick but the froe going on into the ground clean up to the helve eye, and pap setting there wrenching at it slow and steady and hard, like he jest wished it would try to hang on a root or a rock and stay there.<br /><br />"Here, here," Solon said. "If you don't watch out you won't have nothing to do neither during them six extra units tomorrow morning but rest."<br /><br />Pap never even looked up. "Get out of the way," he said.<br /><br />And Solon done it. If he hadn't moved the water bucket, pap would have split it, too, right on top of the bolt, and this time the whole shingle went whirling past Solon's shin jest like a scythe blade.<br /><br />"What you ought to do is to hire somebody to work out them extra overtime units," Solon said.<br /><br />"With what?" Pap said. "I ain't had no WPA experience in dickering over labor. Get out of the way."<br /><br />But Solon had already moved this time. Pap would have had to change his whole position or else made this one curve.<br /><br />So this one missed Solon, too, and pap set there wrenching the froe, slow and hard and steady, back out of the ground.<br /><br />"Maybe there's something else besides cash you might be able to trade with," Solon said. "You might use that dog."<br /><br />That was when pap actually stopped. I didn't know it myself then either, but I found it out a good long time before Solon did. Pap set there with the maul up over his head and the blade of the froe set against the block for the next lick, looking up at Solon. "The dog?" he said.<br /><br />It was a kind of mixed hound, with a little bird dog and some collie and maybe a considerable of almost anything else, but it would ease through the woods without no more noise than a hant and pick up a squirrel's trail on the ground and bark jest once, unless it knowed you was where you could see it, and then tiptoe that trail out jest like a man and never make another sound until it treed, and only then when it knowed you hadn't kept in sight of it. It belonged to pap and Vernon Tull together. Will Varner give it to Tull as a puppy, and pap raised it for a half interest; me and him trained it and it slept in my bed with me until it got so big maw finally run it out of the house, and for the last six months Solon had been trying to buy it. Him and Tull had agreed on two dollars for Tull's half of it, but Solon and pap was still six dollars apart on ourn, because pap said it was worth ten dollars of anybody's money and if Tull wasn't going to collect his full half of that, he was going to collect it for him.<br /><br />"So that's it," pap said. "Them things wasn't work units atall. They was dog units."<br /><br />"Jest a suggestion," Solon said. "Jest a friendly offer to keep them runaway shingles from breaking up your private business for six hours tomorrow morning. You sell me your half of that trick overgrown fyce and I'll finish these shingles for you."<br /><br />"Naturally including them six extra units of one dollars," pap said.<br /><br />"No, no," Solon said. "I'll pay you the same two dollars for your half of that dog that me and Tull agreed on for his half of it. You meet me here tomorrow morning with the dog and you can go on back home or wherever them urgent private affairs are located, and forget about that church roof."<br /><br />For about ten seconds more, pap set there with the maul up over his head, looking at Solon. Then for about three seconds he wasn't looking at Solon or at nothing else. Then he was looking at Solon again. It was jest exactly like after about two and nine-tenths seconds he found out he wasn't looking at Solon, so he looked back at him as quick as he could.<br /><br />"Hah," he said. Then he began to laugh. It was laughing all right, because his mouth was open and that's what it sounded like. But it never went no further back than his teeth and it never come nowhere near reaching as high up as his eyes.<br /><br />And he never said "Look out" this time neither. He jest shifted fast on his hips and swung the maul down, the froe done already druv through the bolt and into the ground while the shingle was still whirling off to slap Solon across the shin.<br /><br />Then they went back at it again. Up to this time I could tell pap's licks from Solon's and Homer's, even with my back turned, not because they was louder or steadier, because Solon and Homer worked steady, too, and the froe never made no especial noise jest going into the ground, but because they was so infrequent; you would hear five or six of Solon's and Homer's little polite chipping licks before you would hear pap's froe go "chug!" and know that another shingle had went whirling off somewhere. But from now on pap's sounded jest as light and quick and polite as Solon's or Homer's either, and, if anything, even a little faster, with the shingles piling up steadier than I could stack them, almost; until now there was going to be more than a plenty of them for Tull and the others to shingle with tomorrow, right on up to noon, when we heard Armstid's farm bell, and Solon laid his froe and maul down and looked at his watch too. And I wasn't so far away neither, but by the time I caught up with pap he had untied the mule from the sapling and was already on it. And maybe Solon and Homer thought they had pap, and maybe for a minute I did, too, but I jest wish they could have seen his face then. He reached our dinner bucket down from the limb and handed it to me.<br /><br />"Go on and eat," he said. "Don't wait for me. Him and his work units. If he wants to know where I went, tell him I forgot something and went home to get it. Tell him I had to go back home to get two spoons for us to eat our dinner with. No, don't tell him that. If he hears I went somewhere to get something I needed to use, even if it's jest a tool to eat with, he will refuse to believe I jest went home, for the reason that I don't own anything there that even I would borrow."<br /><br />He hauled the mule around and heeled him in the flank.<br /><br />Then he pulled up again. "And when I come back, no matter what I say, don't pay no attention to it. No matter what happens, don't you say nothing. Don't open your mouth a-tall, you hear?"<br /><br />Then he went on, and I went back to where Solon and Homer was setting on the running board of Solon's schoolbus truck, eating, and sho enough Solon said jest exactly what pap said he was going to.<br /><br />"I admire his optimism, but he's mistaken. If it's something he needs that he can't use his natural hands and feet for, he's going somewhere else than jest his own house."<br /><br />We had jest went back to the shingles when pap rid up and got down and tied the mule back to the sapling and come and taken up the ax and snicked the blade into the next cut.<br /><br />"Well, men," he said, "I been thinking about it. I still don't think it's right, but I still ain't thought of anything to do about it. But somebody's got to make up for them two hours nobody worked this morning, and since you fellers are two to one against me, it looks like it's going to be me that makes them up. But I got work waiting at home for me tomorrow. I got corn that's crying out loud for me right now. Or maybe that's jest a lie too. Maybe the whole thing is, I don't mind admitting here in private that I been outfigured, but I be dog if I'm going to set here by myself tomorrow morning admitting it in public. Anyway, I ain't. So I'm going to trade with you, Solon. You can have the dog."<br /><br />Solon looked at pap. "I don't know as I want to trade now," he said.<br /><br />"I see," pap said. The ax was still stuck in the cut. He began to pump it up and down to back it out.<br /><br />"Wait," Solon said. "Put that durn ax down." But pap held the ax raised for the lick, looking at Solon and waiting.<br /><br />"You're swapping me half a dog for a half a day's work," Solon said. "Your half of the dog for that half a day's work you still owe on these shingles."<br /><br />"And the two dollars!" pap said. "That you and Tull agreed on. I sell you half the dog for two dollars, and you come back here tomorrow and finish the shingles. You give me the two dollars now, and I'll meet you here in the morning with the dog, and you can show me the receipt from Tull for his half then."<br /><br />"Me and Tull have already agreed," Solon said.<br /><br />"All right," pap said. "Then you can pay Tull his two dollars and bring his receipt with you without no trouble."<br /><br />"Tull will be at the church tomorrow morning, pulling off them old shingles," Solon said.<br /><br />"All right," pap said. "Then it won't be no trouble at all for you to get a receipt from him. You can stop at the church when you pass. Tull ain't named Grier. He won't need to be off somewhere borrowing a crowbar."<br /><br />So Solon taken out his purse and paid pap the two dollars and they went back to work. And now it looked like they really was trying to finish that afternoon, not jest Solon, but even Homer, that didn't seem to be concerned in it nohow, and pap, that had already swapped a half a dog to get rid of whatever work Solon claimed would be left over. I quit trying to stay up with them; I jest stacked shingles.<br /><br />Then Solon laid his froe and maul down. "Well, men," he said, "I don't know what you fellers think, but I consider this a day."<br /><br />"All right," pap said. "You are the one to decide when to quit, since whatever elbow units you consider are going to be shy tomorrow will be yourn."<br /><br />"That's a fact," Solon said. "And since I am giving a day and a half to the church instead of jest a day, like I started out doing, I reckon I better get on home and tend to a little of my own work." He picked up his froe and maul and ax, and went to his truck and stood waiting for Homer to come and get in.<br /><br />"I'll be here in the morning with the dog," pap said.<br /><br />"Sholy," Solon said. It sounded like he had forgot about the dog, or that it wasn't no longer any importance. But he stood there again and looked hard and quiet at pap for about a second. "And a bill of sale from Tull for his half of it. As you say, it won't be no trouble a-tall to get that from him."<br /><br />Him and Homer got into the truck and he started the engine.<br /><br />You couldn't say jest what it was. It was almost like Solon was hurrying himself, so pap wouldn't have to make any excuse or pretense toward doing or not doing anything. "I have always understood the fact that lightning don't have to hit twice is one of the reasons why they named it lightning. So getting lightning-struck is a mistake that might happen to any man. The mistake I seem to made is, I never realized in time that what I was looking at was a cloud. I'll see you in the morning."<br /><br />"With the dog," pap said.<br /><br />"Certainly," Solon said, again like it had slipped his mind completely. "With the dog."<br /><br />Then him and Homer drove off. Then pap got up.<br /><br />"What?" I said. "What? You swapped him your half of Tull's dog for that half a day's work tomorrow. Now what?"<br /><br />"Yes," pap said. "Only before that I had already swapped Tull a half a day's work pulling off them old shingles tomorrow, for Tull's half of that dog. Only we ain't going to wait until tomorrow. We're going to pull them shingles off tonight, and without no more racket about it than is necessary. I don't aim to have nothing on my mind tomorrow but watching Mr. Solon Work-Unit Quick trying to get a bill of sale for two dollars or ten dollars either on the other half of that dog. And we'll do it tonight. I don't want him jest to find out at sunup tomorrow that he is too late. I want him to find out then that even when he laid down to sleep he was already too late."<br /><br />So we went back home and I fed and milked while pap went down to Killegrews' to carry the froe and maul back and to borrow a crowbar. But of all places in the world and doing what under the sun with it, Old Man Killegrew had went and lost his crowbar out of a boat into forty feet of water. And pap said how he come within a inch of going to Solon's and borrowing his crowbar out of pure poetic justice, only Solon might have smelled the rat jest from the idea of the crowbar. So pap went to Armstid's and borrowed hisn and come back and we et supper and cleaned and filled the lantern while maw still tried to find out what we was up to that couldn't wait till morning.<br /><br />We left her still talking, even as far as the front gate, and come on back to the church, walking this time, with the rope and crowbar and a hammer for me, and the lantern still dark.<br /><br />Whitfield and Snopes was unloading a ladder from Snopes' wagon when we passed the church on the way home before dark, so all we had to do was to set the ladder up against the church. Then pap clumb up onto the roof with the lantern and pulled off shingles until he could hang the lantern inside behind the decking, where it could shine out through the cracks in the planks, but you couldn't see it unless you was passing in the road, and by that time anybody would a already heard us. Then I clumb up with the rope, and pap reached it through the decking and around a rafter and back and tied the ends around our waists, and we started. And we went at it. We had them old shingles jest raining down, me using the claw hammer and pap using the crowbar, working the bar under a whole patch of shingles at one time and then laying back on the bar like in one more lick or if the crowbar ever happened for one second to get a solid holt, he would tilt up that whole roof at one time like a hinged box lid.<br /><br />That's exactly what he finally done. He laid back on the bar and this time it got a holt. It wasn't jest a patch of shingles, it was a whole section of decking, so that when he lunged back he snatched that whole section of roof from around the lantern like you would shuck a corn nubbin. The lantern was hanging on a nail. He never even moved the nail, he jest pulled the board off of it, so that it looked like for a whole minute I watched the lantern, and the crowbar, too, setting there in the empty air in a little mess of floating shingles, with the empty nail still sticking through the bail of the lantern, before the whole thing started down into the church.<br /><br />It hit the floor and bounced once. Then it hit the floor again, and this time the whole church jest blowed up into a pit of yellow jumping fire, with me and pap hanging over the edge of it on two ropes.<br /><br />I don't know what become of the rope nor how we got out of it. I don't remember climbing down. Jest pap yelling behind me and pushing me about halfway down the ladder and then throwing me the rest of the way by a handful of my overhalls, and then we was both on the ground, running for the water barrel. It set under the gutter spout at the side, and Armstid was there then; he had happened to go out to his lot about a hour back and seen the lantern on the church roof, and it stayed on his mind until finally he come up to see what was going on, and got there jest in time to stand yelling back and forth with pap across the water barrel. And I believe we still would have put it out. Pap turned and squatted against the barrel and got a holt of it over his shoulder and stood up with that barrel that was almost full and run around the corner and up the steps of the church and hooked his toe on the top step and come down with the barrel busting on top of him and knocking him cold out as a wedge.<br /><br />So we had to drag him back first, and maw was there then, and Mrs. Armstid about the same time, and me and Armstid run with the two fire buckets to the spring, and when we got back there was a plenty there, Whitfield, too, with more buckets, and we done what we could, but the spring was two hundred yards away and ten buckets emptied it and it taken five minutes to fill again, and so finally we all jest stood around where pap had come to again with a big cut on his head and watched it go. It was a old church, long dried out, and full of old colored-picture charts that Whitfield had accumulated for more than fifty years, that the lantern had lit right in the middle of when it finally exploded. There was a special nail where he would keep a old long nightshirt he would wear to baptize in. I would use to watch it all the time during church and Sunday school, and me and the other boys would go past the church sometimes jest to peep in at it, because to a boy of ten it wasn't jest a cloth garment or even a iron armor; it was the old strong Archangel Michael his self, that had fit and strove and conquered sin for so long that it finally had the same contempt for the human beings that returned always to sin as hogs and dogs done that the old strong archangel his self must have had.<br /><br />For a long time it never burned, even after everything else inside had. We could watch it, hanging there among the fire, not like it had knowed in its time too much water to burn easy, but like it had strove and fit with the devil and all the hosts of hell too long to burn in jest a fire that Res Grier started, trying to beat Solon Quick out of half a dog. But at last it went, too, not in a hurry still, but jest all at once, kind of roaring right on up and out against the stars and the far dark spaces. And then there wasn't nothing but jest pap, drenched and groggy-looking, on the ground, with the rest of us around him, and Whitfield like always in his boiled shirt and his black hat and pants, standing there with his hat on, too, like he had strove too long to save what hadn't ought to been created in the first place, from the damnation it didn't even want to escape, to bother to need to take his hat off in any presence. He looked around at us from under it; we was all there now, all that belonged to that church and used it to be born and marry and die from us and the Armstids and Tulls, and Bookwright and Quick and Snopes.<br /><br />"I was wrong," Whitfield said. "I told you we would meet here tomorrow to roof a church. We'll meet here in the morning to raise one."<br /><br />"Of course we got to have a church," pap said. "We're going to have one. And we're going to have it soon. But there's some of us done already give a day or so this week, at the cost of our own work. Which is right and just, and we're going to give more, and glad to. But I don't believe that the Lord..."<br /><br />Whitfield let him finish. He never moved. He jest stood there until pap finally run down of his own accord and hushed and set there on the ground mostly not looking at maw, before Whitfield opened his mouth.<br /><br />"Not you," Whitfield said. "Arsonist."<br /><br />"Arsonist?" pap said.<br /><br />"Yes," Whitfield said. "If there is any pursuit in which you can engage without carrying flood and fire and destruction and death behind you, do it. But not one hand shall you lay to this new house until you have proved to us that you are to be trusted again with the powers and capacities of a man." He looked about at us again. "Tull and Snopes and Armstid have already promised for tomorrow. I understand that Quick had another half day he intended "<br /><br />"I can give another day," Solon said.<br /><br />"I can give the rest of the week," Homer said.<br /><br />"I ain't rushed neither," Snopes said.<br /><br />"That will be enough to start with, then," Whitfield said.<br /><br />"It's late now. Let us all go home."<br /><br />He went first. He didn't look back once, at the church or at us. He went to the old mare and clumb up slow and stiff and powerful, and was gone, and we went too, scattering.<br /><br />But I looked back at it. It was jest a shell now, with a red and fading core, and I had hated it at times and feared it at others, and I should have been glad. But there was something that even that fire hadn't even touched. Maybe that's all it was jest indestructibility, endurability that old man that could plan to build it back while its walls was still fire-fierce and then calmly turn his back and go away because he knowed that the men that never had nothing to give toward the new one but their work would be there at sunup tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, too, as long as it was needed, to give that work to build it back again. So it hadn't gone a-tall; it didn't no more care for that little fire and flood than Whitfield's old baptizing gown had done. Then we was home. Maw had left so fast the lamp was still lit, and we could see pap now, still leaving a puddle where he stood, with a cut across the back of his head where the barrel had busted and the blood-streaked water soaking him to the waist.<br /><br />"Get them wet clothes off," maw said.<br /><br />"I don't know as I will or not," pap said. "I been publicly notified that I ain't fitten to associate with white folks, so I publicly notify them same white folks and Methodists, too, not to try to associate with me, or the devil can have the hindmost."<br /><br />But maw hadn't even listened. When she come back with a pan of water and a towel and the liniment bottle, pap was already in his nightshirt.<br /><br />"I don't want none of that neither," he said. "If my head wasn't worth busting, it ain't worth patching." But she never paid no mind to that neither. She washed his head off and dried it and put the bandage on and went out again, and pap went and got into bed.<br /><br />"Hand me my snuff; then you get out of here and stay out too!" he said.<br /><br />But before I could do that maw come back. She had a glass of hot toddy, and she went to the bed and stood there with it, and pap turned his head and looked at it.<br /><br />"What's that?" he said.<br /><br />But maw never answered, and then he set up in bed and drawed a long, shuddering breath we could hear it and after a minute he put out his hand for the toddy and set there holding it and drawing his breath, and then he taken a sip of it.<br /><br />"I Godfrey, if him and all of them put together think they can keep me from working on my own church like ary other man, he better be a good man to try it." He taken another sip of the toddy. Then he taken a long one. "Arsonist," he said. "Work units. Dog units. And now arsonist. I Godfrey, what a day!"Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-62572918369315332422009-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:002009-03-04T08:30:52.640-08:00Details of A Sunset<span style="font-weight: bold;">By: Vladimir Nabokov<br /><br /></span><br />THE last streetcar was disappearing in the mirrorlike murk of the street and, along the wire above it, a spark of Bengal light, crackling and quivering, sped into the distance like a blue star.<br /><br />"Well, might as well just plod along, even though you are pretty drunk, Mark, pretty drunk...."<br /><br />The spark went out. The roofs glistened in the moonlight, silvery angles broken by oblique black cracks.<br /><br />Through this mirrory darkness he staggered home: Mark Standfuss, a salesclerk, a demigod, fair-haired Mark, a lucky fellow with a high starched collar. At the back of his neck, above the white line of that collar, his hair ended in a funny, boyish little tag that had escaped the barber's scissors. That little tag was what made Klara fall in love with him, and she swore that it was true love, that she had quite forgotten the handsome ruined foreigner who last year had rented a room from her mother, Frau Heise.<br /><br />"And yet, Mark, you're drunk...."<br /><br />That evening there had been beer and songs with friends in honor of Mark and russet-haired, pale Klara, and in a week they would be married; then there would be a lifetime of bliss and peace, and of nights with her, the red blaze of her hair spreading all over the pillow, and, in the morning, again her quiet laughter, the green dress, the coolness of her bare arms.<br /><br />In the middle of a square stood a black wigwam: the tram tracks were being repaired. He remembered how today he had got under her short sleeve, and kissed the touching scar from her smallpox vaccination. And now he was walking home, unsteady on his feet from too much happiness and too much drink, swinging his slender cane, arid among the dark houses on the opposite side of the empty street a night echo clop-dopped in time with his footfalls; but grew silent when he turned at the corner where the same man as always, in apron and peaked cap, stood by his grill, selling frankfurters, crying out in a tender and sad birdlike whistle: "Wiirstchen, wiirstchen..."<br /><br />Mark felt a sort of delicious pity for the frankfurters, the moon, the blue spark that had receded along the wire, and, as he tensed his body against a friendly fence, he was overcome with laughter, and, bending, exhaled into a little round hole in the boards the words "Klara, Klara, oh my darling!"<br /><br />On the other side of the fence, in a gap between the buildings, was a rectangular vacant lot. Several moving vans stood there like enormous coffins. They were bloated from their loads. Heaven knows what was piled inside them. Oakwood trunks, probably, and chandeliers like iron spiders, and the heavy skeleton of a double bed. The moon cast a hard glare on the vans. To the left of the lot, huge black hearts were flattened against a bare rear wall—the shadows, many times magnified, of the leaves of a linden tree that stood next to a streetlamp on the edge of the sidewalk.<br /><br />Mark was still chuckling as he climbed the dark stairs to his floor. He reached the final step, but mistakenly raised his foot again, and it came down awkwardly with a bang. While he was groping in the dark in search of the keyhole, his bamboo cane slipped out from under his arm and, with a subdued little clatter, slid down the staircase. Mark held his breath. He thought the cane would turn with the stairs and knock its way down to the bottom. But the high-pitched wooden click abruptly ceased. Must have stopped. He grinned with relief and, holding on to the banister (the beer singing in his hollow head), started to descend again. He nearly fell, and sat down heavily on a step, as he groped around with his hands.<br /><br />Upstairs the door onto the landing opened. Frau Standfuss, with a kerosene lamp in her hand, half-dressed, eyes blinking, the haze of her hair showing from beneath her nightcap, came out and called, "Is that you, Mark?"<br /><br />A yellow wedge of light encompassed the banisters, the stairs, and his cane, and Mark, panting and pleased, climbed up again to the landing, and his black, hunchbacked shadow followed him up along the wall.<br /><br />Then, in the dimly lit room, divided by a red screen, the following conversation took place:<br /><br />"You've had too much to drink, Mark."<br /><br />"No, no, Mother... I'm so happy..."<br /><br />"You've got yourself all dirty, Mark. Your hand is black...."<br /><br />"...so very happy.... Ah, that feels good... water's nice and cold. Pour some on the top of my head... more.... Everybody congratulated me, and with good reason.... Pour some more on."<br /><br />"But they say she was in love with somebody else such a short time ago—a foreign adventurer of some kind. Left without paying five marks he owed Frau Heise...."<br /><br />"Oh, stop—you don't understand anything.... We did such a lot of singing today.... Look, I've lost a button.... I think they'll double my salary when I get married...."<br /><br />"Come on, go to bed.... You're all dirty, and your new pants too."<br /><br />That night Mark had an unpleasant dream. He saw his late father. His father came up to him, with an odd smile on his pale, sweaty face, seized Mark under the arms, and began to tickle him silently, violently, and relentlessly.<br /><br />He only remembered that dream after he had arrived at the store where he worked, and he remembered it because a friend of his, jolly Adolf, poked him in the ribs. For one instant something flew open in his soul, momentarily froze still in surprise, and slammed shut. Then again everything became easy and limpid, and the neckties he offered his customers smiled brightly, in sympathy with his happiness. He knew he would see Klara that evening—he would only run home for dinner, then go straight to her house.... The other day, when he was telling her how cozily and tenderly they would live, she had suddenly burst into tears. Of course Mark had understood that these were tears of joy (as she herself explained); she began whirling about the room, her skirt like a green sail, and then she started rapidly smoothing her glossy hair, the color of apricot jam, in front of the mirror. And her face was pale and bewildered, also from happiness, of course. It was all so natural, after all....<br /><br />"A striped one? Why certainly."<br /><br />He knotted the tie on his hand, and turned it this way and that, enticing the customer. Nimbly he opened the flat cardboard boxes....<br /><br />Meanwhile his mother had a visitor: Frau Heise. She had come without warning, and her face was tear-stained. Gingerly, almost as if she were afraid of breaking into pieces, she lowered herself onto a stool in the tiny, spotless kitchen where Frau Standfuss was washing the dishes. A two-dimensional wooden pig hung on the wall, and a half-open matchbox with one burnt match lay on the stove.<br /><br />"I have come to you with bad news, Frau Standfuss."<br /><br />The other woman froze, clutching a plate to her chest.<br /><br />"It's about Klara. Yes. She has lost her senses. That lodger of mine came back today—you know, the one I told you about. And Klara has gone mad. Yes, it all happened this morning.... She never wants to see your son again.... You gave her the material for a new dress; it will be returned to you. And here is a letter for Mark. Klara's gone mad. I don't know what to think...."<br /><br />Meanwhile Mark had finished work and was already on his way home. Crew-cut Adolf walked him all the way to his house. They both stopped, shook hands, and Mark gave a shove with his shoulder to the door which opened into cool emptiness.<br /><br />"Why go home? The heck with it. Let's have a bite somewhere, you and I." Adolf stood, propping himself on his cane as if it were a tail. "The heck with it, Mark "<br /><br />Mark gave his cheek an irresolute rub, then laughed. "All right. Only it's my treat."<br /><br />When, half an hour later, he came out of the pub and said goodbye to his friend, the flush of a fiery sunset rilled the vista of the canal, and a rain-streaked bridge in the distance was margined by a narrow rim of gold along which passed tiny black figures.<br /><br />He glanced at his watch and decided to go straight to his fiancee's without stopping at his mother's. His happiness and the limpidity of the evening air made his head spin a little. An arrow of bright copper struck the lacquered shoe of a fop jumping out of a car. The puddles, which still had not dried, surrounded by the bruise of dark damp (the live eyes of the asphalt), reflected the soft incandescence of the evening. The houses were as gray as ever; yet the roofs, the moldings above the upper floors, the gilt-edged lightning rods, the stone cupolas, the colonnettes—which nobody notices during the day, for day people seldom look up—were now bathed in rich ochre, the sunset's airy warmth, and thus they seemed unexpected and magical, those upper protrusions, balconies, cornices, pillars, contrasting sharply, because of their tawny brilliance, with the drab facades beneath.<br /><br />Oh, how happy I am, Mark kept musing, how everything around celebrates my happiness.<br /><br />As he sat in the tram he tenderly, lovingly examined his fellow passengers. He had such a young face, had Mark, with pink pimples on the chin, glad luminous eyes, an untrimmed tag at the hollow of his nape.... One would think fate might have spared him.<br /><br />In a few moments I'll see Klara, he thought. She'll meet me at the door. She'll say she barely survived until evening.<br /><br />He gave a start. He had missed the stop where he should have got off. On the way to the exit he tripped over the feet of a fat gentleman who was reading a medical journal; Mark wanted to tip his hat but nearly fell: the streetcar was turning with a screech. He grabbed an overhead strap and managed to keep his balance. The man slowly retracted his short legs with a phlegmy and cross growl. He had a gray mustache which twisted up pugnaciously. Mark gave him a guilty smile and reached the front end of the car. He grasped the iron handrails with both hands, leaned forward, calculated his jump. Down below, the asphalt streamed past, smooth and glistening. Mark jumped. There was a burn of friction against his soles, and his legs started running by themselves, his feet stamping with involuntary resonance. Several odd things occurred simultaneously: from the front of the car, as it swayed away from Mark, the conductor emitted a furious shout; the shiny asphalt swept upward like the seat of a swing; a roaring mass hit Mark from behind. He felt as if a thick thunderbolt had gone through him from head to toe, and then nothing. He was standing alone on the glossy asphalt. He looked around. He saw, at a distance, his own fig-ure, the slender back of Mark Standfuss, who was walking diagonally across the street as if nothing had happened. Marveling, he caught up with himself in one easy sweep, and now it was he nearing the sidewalk, his entire frame filled with a gradually diminishing vibration.<br /><br />That was stupid. Almost got run over by a bus....<br /><br />The street was wide and gay. The colors of the sunset had invaded half of the sky. Upper stories and roofs were bathed in glorious light. Up there, Mark could discern translucent porticoes, friezes and frescoes, trellises covered with orange roses, winged statues that lifted skyward golden, unbearably blazing lyres. In bright undulations, ethereally, festively, these architectonic enchantments were receding into the heavenly distance, and Mark could not understand how he had never noticed before those galleries, those temples suspended on high.<br /><br />He banged his knee painfully. That black fence again. He could not help laughing as he recognized the vans beyond. There they stood, like gigantic coffins. Whatever might they conceal within? Treasures? The skeletons of giants? Or dusty mountains of sumptuous furniture?<br /><br />Oh, I must have a look. Or else Klara will ask, and I shan't know.<br /><br />He gave a quick nudge to the door of one of the vans and went inside. Empty. Empty, except for one little straw chair in the center, comically poised askew on three legs.<br /><br />Mark shrugged and went out on the opposite side. Once again the <-hot evening glow gushed into sight. And now in front of him was the familiar wrought-iron wicket, and further on Klara's window, crossed by a green branch. Klara herself opened the gate, and stood waiting, lifting her bared elbows, adjusting her hair. The russet tufts of her armpits showed through the sunlit openings of her short sleeves.<br /><br />Mark, laughing noiselessly, ran up to embrace her. He pressed his cheek against the warm, green silk of her dress.<br /><br />Her hands came to rest on his head.<br /><br />"I was so lonely all day, Mark. But now you are here."<br /><br />She opened the door, and Mark immediately found himself in the dining room, which struck him as being inordinately spacious and bright.<br /><br />"When people are as happy as we are now," she said, "they can do without a hallway," Klara spoke in a passionate whisper, and he felt that her words had some special, wonderful meaning.<br /><br />And in the dining room, around the snow-white oval of the tablecloth, sat a number of people, none of whom Mark had seen before at his fiancee's house. Among them was Adolf, swarthy, with his square-shaped head; there was also that short-legged, big-bellied old man who had been reading a medical journal in the tram and was still grumbling.<br /><br />Mark greeted the company with a shy nod and sat down beside Klara, and in that same instant felt, as he had a short time ago, a bolt of atrocious pain pass through his whole frame. He writhed, and Klara's green dress floated away, diminished, and turned into the green shade of a lamp. The lamp was swaying on its cord. Mark was lying beneath it, with that inconceivable pain crushing his body, and nothing could be distinguished save that oscillating lamp, and his ribs were pressing against his heart, making it impossible to breathe, and someone was bending his leg, straining to break it, in a moment it would crack. He freed himself somehow, the lamp glowed green again, and Mark saw himself sitting a little way off, beside Klara, and no sooner had he seen it than he found himself brushing his knee against her warm silk skirt. And Klara was laughing, her head thrown back.<br /><br />He felt an urge to tell about what had just happened, and, addressing all those present—jolly Adolf, the irritable fat man—uttered with an effort: "The foreigner is offering the aforementioned prayers on the river...."<br /><br />It seemed to him that he had made everything clear, and apparently they had all understood.... Klara, with a little pout, pinched his cheek: "My poor darling. It'll be all right...."<br /><br />He began to feel tired and sleepy. He put his arm around Klara's neck, drew her to him, and lay back. And then the pain pounced upon him again, and everything became clear.<br /><br />Mark was lying supine, mutilated and bandaged, and the lamp was not swinging any longer. The familiar fat man with the mustache, now a doctor in a white gown, made worried growling small noises as he peered into the pupils of Mark's eyes. And what pain!... God, in a moment his heart would be impaled on a rib and burst... God, any instant now.... This is silly. Why isn't Klara here?...<br /><br />The doctor frowned and clucked his tongue.<br /><br />Mark no longer breathed, Mark had departed—whither, into what other dreams, none can tell.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3659404229586859564.post-74074835774719192462009-03-04T07:49:00.001-08:002009-03-04T08:31:20.024-08:00Kung I-Chi<span style="font-weight: bold;">By: Lu Xun</span><br /><br />The wine shops in Luchen are not like those in other parts of China. They all have a right-angled counter facing the street, where hot water is kept ready for warming wine. When men come off work at midday and in the evening they buy a bowl of wine; it cost four coppers twenty years ago, but now it costs ten. Standing beside the counter, they drink it warm, and relax. Another copper will buy a plate of salted bamboo shoots or peas flavoured with aniseed, to go with the wine; while for a dozen coppers you can buy a meat dish. But most of these customers belong to the short-coated class, few of whom can afford this. Only those in long gowns enter the adjacent room to order wine and dishes, and sit and drink at leisure.<br /><br />At the age of twelve I started work as a waiter in Prosperity Tavern, at the entrance to the town. The tavern keeper said I looked too foolish to serve the long-gowned customers, so I was given work in the outer room. Although the short-coated customers there were more easily pleased, there were quite a few trouble-makers among them too. They would insist on watching with their own eyes as the yellow wine was ladled from the keg, looking to see if there were any water at the bottom of the wine pot, and inspecting for themselves the immersion of the pot in hot water. Under such keen scrutiny, it was very difficult to dilute the wine. So after a few days my employer decided I was not suited for this work. Fortunately I had been recommended by someone influential, so he could not dismiss me, and I was transferred to the dull work of warming wine.<br /><br />Thenceforward I stood all day behind the counter, fully engaged with my duties. Although I gave satisfaction at this work, I found it monotonous and futile. Our employer was a fierce-looking individual, and the customers were a morose lot, so that it was impossible to be gay. Only when Kung I-chi came to the tavern could I laugh a little. That is why I still remember him.<br /><br />Kung was the only long-gowned customer to drink his wine standing. He was a big man, strangely pallid, with scars that often showed among the wrinkles of his face. He had a large, unkempt beard, streaked with white. Although he wore a long gown, it was dirty and tattered, and looked as if it had not been washed or mended for over ten years. He used so many archaisms in his speech, it was impossible to understand half he said. As his surname was Kung, he was nicknamed "Kung I-chi," the first three characters in a children's copybook. Whenever he came into the shop, everyone would look at him and chuckle. And someone would call out:<br /><br />"Kung I-chi! There are some fresh scars on your face!"<br /><br />Ignoring this remark, Kung would come to the counter to order two bowls of heated wine and a dish of peas flavoured with aniseed. For this he produced nine coppers. Someone else would call out, in deliberately loud tones:<br /><br />"You must have been stealing again!"<br /><br />"Why ruin a man's good name groundlessly?" he would ask, opening his eyes wide.<br /><br />"Pooh, good name indeed! The day before yesterday I saw you with my own eyes being hung up and beaten for stealing books from the Ho family!"<br /><br />Then Kung would flush, the veins on his forehead standing out as he remonstrated: "Taking a book can't be considered stealing, . . . Taking a book, the affair of a scholar, can't be considered stealing!" Then followed quotations from the classics, like "A gentleman keeps his integrity even in poverty," and a jumble of archaic expressions till everybody was roaring with laughter and the whole tavern was gay.<br /><br />From gossip I heard, Kung I-chi had studied the classics but had never passed the official examination. With no way of making a living, he grew poorer and poorer, until be was practically reduced to beggary. Happily, he was a good calligrapher, and could get enough copying work to support himself. Unfortunately he had failings: he liked drinking and was lazy. So after a few days he would invariably disappear, taking books, paper, brushes and inkstone with him. After this had happened several times, nobody wanted to employ him as a copyist again. Then there was no alternative for him but to take to occasional pilfering. In our tavern his behaviour was exemplary. He never failed to pay up, although sometimes, when he had no ready money, his name would appear on the board where we listed debtors. However, in less than a month he would always settle, and his name would be wiped off the board again.<br /><br />After drinking half a howl of wine, Kung would regain his composure. But then someone would ask:<br /><br />"Kung I-chi, do you really know how to read?"<br /><br />When Kung looked as if such a question were beneath contempt, they would continue: "How is it you never passed even the lowest official examination?"<br /><br />At that Kung would look disconsolate and ill at ease. His face would turn pale and his lips move, but only to utter those unintelligible classical expressions. Then everybody would laugh heartily again, and the whole tavern would be merry.<br /><br />At such times, I could join in the laughter without being scolded by my master. In fact he often put such questions to Kung himself, to evoke laughter. Knowing it was no use talking to them, Kung would chat to us children. Once he asked me:<br /><br />"Have you had any schooling?"<br /><br />When I nodded, he said, "Well then, I'll test you. How do you write the character hui in hui-xiang (aniseed--Translator) peas?"<br /><br />I thought, "I'm not going to be tested by a beggar!" So I turned away and ignored him. After waiting for some time, he said very earnestly:<br /><br />"You can't write it? I'll show you how. Mind you remember! You ought to remember such characters, because later when you have a shop of your own, you'll need them to make up your accounts."<br /><br />It seemed to me I was still very far from owning a shop; besides, our employer never entered hui-xiang peas in the account book. Amused yet exasperated, I answered listlessly: "Who wants you as a teacher? Isn't it the character hui with the grass radical?"<br /><br />Kung was delighted, and tapped two long fingernails on the counter. "Right, right!" he said, nodding. "Only there are four different ways of writing hui. Do you know them?" My patience exhausted, I scowled and made off. Kung I-chi had dipped his finger in wine, in order to trace the characters on the counter; but when he saw how indifferent I was, he sighed and looked most disappointed.<br /><br />Sometimes children in the neighbourhood, hearing laughter, came to join in the fun, and surrounded Kung I-chi Then he would give them peas flavoured with aniseed, one apiece. After eating the peas, the children would still hang round, their eyes on the dish. Flustered, he would cover the dish with his hand and, bending forward from the waist, would say: "There isn't much. I haven't much as it is." Then straightening up to look at the peas again, he would shake his head. "Not much! Verily, not much, forsooth!" Then the children would scamper off, with shouts of laughter.<br /><br />Kung I-chi was very good company, but we got along all right without him too.<br /><br />One day, a few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the tavern keeper was laboriously making out his accounts. Taking down the board from the wall, he suddenly said: "Kung I-chi hasn't been in for a long time. He still owes nineteen coppers!" That made me realize how long it was since we had seen him.<br /><br />"How could he come?" one of the customers said. "His legs were broken in that last beating."<br /><br />"Ah!"<br /><br />"He was stealing again. This time he was fool enough to steal from Mr. Ting, the provincial scholar! As if anybody could get away with that!"<br /><br />"What then?"<br /><br />"What then? First he had to write a confession, then he was beaten. The beating lasted nearly all night, until his legs were broken."<br /><br />"And then?"<br /><br />"Well, his legs were broken."<br /><br />"Yes, but after that?"<br /><br />"After? . . . Who knows? He may be dead."<br /><br />The tavern keeper did not pursue his questions, but went on slowly making up his accounts.<br /><br />After the Mid-Autumn Festival the wind grew colder every day, as winter came on. Even though I spent all my time by the stove, I had to wear my padded jacket. One afternoon, when the shop was empty, I was sitting with my eyes closed when I heard a voice:<br /><br />"Warm a bowl of wine."<br /><br />The voice was very low, yet familiar. But when I looked up, there was no one in sight. I stood up and looked towards the door, and there, facing the threshold, beneath the counter, sat Kung I-chi. His face was haggard and lean, and he looked in a terrible condition. He had on a ragged lined jacket, and was sitting cross-legged on a mat which was attached to his shoulders by a straw rope. When he saw me, he repeated:<br /><br />"Warm a bowl of wine."<br /><br />At this point my employer leaned over the counter and said: "Is that Kung I-chi? You still owe nineteen coppers!"<br /><br />"That . . . I'll settle next time," replied Kung, looking up disconsolately. "Here's ready money; the wine must be good."<br /><br />The tavern keeper, just as in the past, chuckled and said:<br /><br />"Kung I-chi, you've been stealing again!"<br /><br />But instead of protesting vigorously, the other simply said:<br /><br />"You like your joke."<br /><br />"Joke? If you didn't steal, why did they break your legs?"<br /><br />"I fell," said Kung in a low voice. "I broke them in a fall." His eyes pleaded with the tavern keeper to let the matter drop. By now several people had gathered round, and they all laughed. I warmed the wine, carried it over, and set it on the threshold. He produced four coppers from his ragged coat pocket, and placed them in my hand. As he did so I saw that his hands were covered with mud--he must have crawled here on them. Presently he finished the wine and, amid the laughter and comments of the others, slowly dragged himself off by his hands.<br /><br />A long time went by after that without our seeing Kung again. At the end of the year, when the tavern keeper took down the board, he said, "Kung I-chi still owes nineteen coppers!" At the Dragon Boat Festival the next year, he said the same thing again. But when the Mid-Autumn Festival came, he did not mention it. And another New Year came round without our seeing any more of him.<br /><br />Nor have I ever seen him since--probably Kung I-chi is really dead.Archibald Haddockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13946670893394378551noreply@blogger.com0