elisabettacormac

[elisabettacormac]

Mulk Raj Anand: The Lost Child

Mulk Raj Anand

The Lost Child

It was the festival of spring. From the wintry shades of narrow lanes and alleys emerged a gaily clad humanity, thick as a swarm of bright-coloured rabbits issuing from a warren. They entered the flooded sea of sparkling silver sunshine outside the city gates and sped towards the fair. Some walked, some rode on horses, others sat, being carried in bamboo and bullock carts. One little boy ran between his parent’s legs, brimming over with life and laughter. The joyous morning gave greetings and unashamed invitations to all to come away into the fields, full of flowers and songs.

“Come, child, come,” called his parents, as he lagged behind, fascinated by the toys in the shops that lined the way.

He hurried towards his parents, his feet obedient to their call, his eyes still lingering on the receding toys. As he came to where they had stopped to wait for him he could not suppress the desire of his heart, even though he well knew the old, cold stare of refusal in their eyes.

“I want that toy,” he pleaded.

His father looked at him red-eyed in his familiar tyrant’s way. His mother, melted by the free spirit of the day, was tender, and giving him her finger to catch, said: ‘Look, child, what is before you.’

The faint disgust of the child’s unfulfilled desire had hardly been quelled in the heavy, pouting sob of a breath, ‘m-o-th-er,’ when the pleasure of what was before him filled his eager eye. They had left the dusty road on which they had walked so far. It wended its weary way circuitously to the north. They had come upon a footpath in a field.

It was a flowering mustard field, pale like melting gold as it swept across miles and miles of even land — a river of yellow liquid light, ebbing and falling with each fresh eddy of wild wind, and straying in places into broad rich tributary streams, yet running in a constant sunny sweep towards the distant mirage of an ocean of silver light. Where it ended, on one side stood a cluster of low mud-walled houses, thrown into relief by a dense crowd of yellow-robed men and women from which arose a high-pitched sequence of whistling, creaking, squeaking, roaring, humming noises, sweeping across the groves to the blue-throated sky like the weird, strange sound of Siva’s mad laughter.

The child looked up to his father and mother, saturated with the shrill joy and wonder of this vast glory, and feeling that they, too, wore the evidence of this pure delight in their faces, he left the footpath and plunged headlong into the field, prancing like a young colt, his small feet timing with the fitful gusts of wind that came rich with the fragrance of more distant fields.

A group of dragon-flies were bustling about on their gaudy purple wings, intercepting the flight of a lone black butterfly in search of sweetness from the flowers. The child followed them in the air with his gaze, till one of the them would fold its wings and rest, and he would try to catch it. But it would go fluttering, flapping, up into the air, when he had almost caught it in his hands. One bold black bee, having evaded capture, sought to tempt him by whining round his ear and nearly settled on his lips, when his mother gave a cautionary call: “Come, child, come, come on to the footpath.”

He ran towards his parents gaily and walked abreast of them for a while, being, however, soon left behind, attracted by the little insects and worms along the footpath that were teeming out from their hiding-places to enjoy the sunshine.

“Come, child, come,” his parents called from the shade of a grove where they had seated themselves on the edge of a well. He ran towards them. A

n old banyan tree outstretched its powerful arms over the blossoming jack and jaman and neem and champak and scrisha and cast its shadows across beds of golden cassis and crimson gulmohur as an old grandmother spreads her skirts over her young ones. But the blushing blossoms freely offered their adoration to the Sun in spite of their protecting chaperon, by half covering themselves, and the sweet perfume of their pollen mingled with the soft, cool breeze that came and went in little puffs, only to be wafted aloft by a stronger breeze.

A shower of young flowers fell upon the child as he entered the grove and, forgetting his parents, he began to gather the raining petals in his hands. But lo! he heard the cooing of the doves and ran towards his parents, shouting: “the dove! The dove!” The raining petals dropped from his forgotten hands. A curious look was in his parents’ faces till a koel struck out a note of love and released their pent-up souls.

“Come, child come!” they called to the child, who had now gone running in wild capers round the banyan tree, and gathering him up they took the narrow, winding footpath which led to the fair through the mustard fields.

As they neared the village the child could see many other footpaths full of throngs, converging to the whirlpool of the fair, and felt at once repelled and fascinated by the confusion of the world he was entering.

A sweetmeat seller hawked: ‘Gulab-jamun, rasgula, burfi, jalebi’, at the corner of the entrance, and a crowd pressed round his counter at the foot of an architecture of many-coloured sweets, decorated with leaves of silver and gold. The child stared open-eyed and his mouth watered for the burfi that was his favourite sweet. “I want that burfi,” he slowly murmured. But he half knew as he begged that his plea would not be heeded because his parents would say he was greedy. So without waiting for an answer he moved on.

A flower-seller hawked: ‘A garland of gulmohur, a garland of gulmohur.’ The child seemed irresistibly drawn by the implacable sweetness of the scents that came floating on the wings of the languid air. He went towards the basket where the flowers were heaped and half murmured, “I want that garland.” But he well knew his parents would refuse to buy him those flowers because they would say they were cheap. So without waiting for an answer he moved on.

A man stood holding a pole with yellow, red, green and purple balloons flying from it. The child was simply carried away by the rainbow glory of the silken colours and he was possessed by an overwhelming desire to possess them all. But he well knew his parents would never buy him the balloons because they would say he was too old to play with such toys. So he walked on farther.

A snake-charmer stood playing a flute to a snake which coiled itself in a basket, its head raised in a graceful bend like the neck of a swan, while the music stole into its invisible ears like the gentle rippling of a miniature waterfall. The child went towards the snake-charmer. But knowing his parents had forbidden him to hear such coarse music as the snake-charmer played, he proceeded farther.

There was a roundabout in full swing. Men, women and children, carried away in a whirling motion, shrieked and cried with his dizzy laughter. The child watched them intently going round and round, a pink blush of a smile on his face, his eyes rippling with the same movement, his lips parted in amazement, till he felt that he himself was being carried round. The ring seemed to go fiercely at first, then gradually it began to move less fast. Presently the child, rapt, finger in his mouth beheld it stop. This time, before his overpowering lover for the anticipated sensation of movement had been chilled by the thought of his parents’ eternal denial, he made a bold request: ‘I want to go on the roundabout, please, father, mother.’

There was no reply. He turned to look at his parents. They were not there ahead of him. He turned to look on either side. They were not there. He looked behind. There was no sign of them.

A full deep cry rose within his dry throat and with a sudden jerk of his body he ran from where he stood, crying in real fear, ‘Mother father!’ Tears rolled down from his eyes, hot and fierce; his flushed face was convulsed with fear. Panic-stricken, he ran to one side first, then to the other, hither and thither in all directions, knowing not where to go. “Mother, father!” he wailed with a moist, shrill breath now, his throat being wet with swallowing the spittle. His yellow turban untied and his clothes, wet with perspiration, became muddy where the dust had mixed with the sweat the dust had mixed with the sweat of his body. His light frame seemed heavy as a mass of lead.

Having run to and fro in a rage of running for a while he stood defeated, his cries suppressed into sobs. At little distances on the green grass he could see, through his filmy eyes, men-and women talking. He tried to look intently among the patches of bright yellow clothes, but there was no sign of his father and mother among these people, who seemed to laugh and talk just for the sake of laughing and talking.

He ran quickly again, this time to a shrine to which people seemed to be crowding. Every little inch of space here was congested with men but he ran through people’s legs, his little sob lingering “Mother, father!” Near the entrance to the temple, however, the crowd became very thick men jostled each other, heavy men, with flashing, murderous eyes and hefty shoulders. The poor child struggled to thrust a way between their feet but, knocked to and fro by their brutal movements, he might have been trampled underfoot had he not shrieked at the highest pitch of this voice: “Father, mother!” A man in the surging crowd heard his cry and, stooping with very great difficulty, lifted him up in his arms.

“How did you get here, child? whose baby are you?” the man asked as he steered clear of the mass. The child wept more bitterly then ever now and only cried: “I want my mother, I want my father!”

The man tried to soothe him by taking him to the roundabout. “Will you have a ride on the horse?” he gently asked as he approached the ring. The child’s throat tore into a thousand shrill sobs and he only shouted: “I want my mother, I want my father!”

The man headed towards the place where the snake-charmer still played on the flute to the swaying cobra. “Listen to that nice music, child” he pleaded. But the child shut his ears with his fingers and shouted his double-pitched strain: “I want my mother, I want my father!” The man took him near the balloons, thinking the bright colours of the balloons would distract the child’s attention and quieten him. “Would you like a rainbow-coloured balloon?” he persuasively asked. The child turned his eyes from the flying balloons and just sobbed: “I want my mother, I want my father.”

The man, still importunate in his kindly desire to make the child happy, bore him to the gate where the flower-seller sat. “Look! can you smell those nice flowers, child? Would you like a garland to put round your neck?” The child turned his nose away from the basket and reiterated his sob: “I want my mother, I want my father.”

Thinking to humour his disconsolate charge by a gift of sweets, the man took him to the counter of sweet shop.

“What sweets would you like, child?” he asked. The child turned his face from the sweet shop and only sobbed: “I want my mother, I want my father.”

[elisabettacormac]

Mary Robison: Sisters

RAY SNAPPED A TOMATO FROM a plant and chewed into its side. His niece, Melissa, was sitting in a swing that hung on chains from the arm of a walnut tree. She wore gauzy cotton pants and a twisted scarf across her breasts. Her hair was cropped and pleat-curled.

“Hey,” said Penny, Ray’s wife. She came up the grass in rubber thongs, carrying a rolled-up news magazine. “If you’re weeding, Ray, I can see milkweed and thistle and a dandelion and chickweed from here. I can see sumac.”

“You see good,” said Ray.

“I just had the nicest call from Sister Mary Clare,” Penny said. “She’ll be out to visit this evening.”

“Oh, boy,” Ray said. He spat a seed from the end of his tongue.

“Her name’s Lily,” Melissa said. “She’s my sister and she’s your niece, and we don’t have to call her Mary Clare. We can call her Lily.”

Penny stood in front of Melissa, obscuring Ray’s view of the girl’s top half—as if Ray hadn’t been seeing it all morning.

“What time is Lily coming?” Melissa asked.

“Don’t tell her,” Ray said to Penny. “She’ll disappear.”

“Give me that!” Melissa said. She grabbed Penny’s magazine and swatted at her uncle.

“Do you know a Dr. Streich?” Penny said, putting a hand on Melissa’s bare shoulder to settle her down. “He was a professor at your university, and there’s an article in that magazine about him.”

“No,” Melissa said. She righted herself in the swing.

“Well, I guess you might not know him,” Penny said. “He hasn’t been at your university for years, according to the article. He’s a geologist.”

“I don’t know him,” Melissa said.

Penny pulled a thread from a seam at her hip. “He’s pictured above the article,” she said.

“Blessed be Mary Clare,” Ray said. “Blessed be her holy name.”

Penny said, “I thought we’d all go out tonight.”

“You thought we’d go to the Wednesday Spaghetti Dinner at St. Anne’s,” Ray said, “and show Lily to Father Mulby.”

Penny kneeled and brushed back some leaves on a head of white cabbage.

“I’d like to meet Father Mulby,” Melissa said.

“You wouldn’t,” said Ray. “Frank Mulby was a penitentiary warden before he was a priest. He was a club boxer before that. Years ago.”

Ray stuck the remainder of the tomato in his mouth and wiped the juice from his chin with the heel of his hand. “Ride over to the fire station with me,” he said to Melissa.

“Unh-unh, I don’t feel like it.” She got off the board seat and patted her bottom. “I don’t see what Mulby’s old jobs have to do with my wanting to meet him.”

“Why do you want to meet him?” Penny said. She was looking up at Melissa, shading her eyes with her hand.

“To ask him something,” Melissa said. “To clear something up.”

AT THE FIREHOUSE, TWO MEN in uniforms were playing pinochle and listening to Julie London on the radio.

“Gene. Dennis,” said Ray.

“What are you here for, Ray?” Dennis said. “You aren’t on today. Gene’s on, I’m on, those three spades waxing the ladder truck are on.” Dennis made a fan with his cards and pressed them on the tabletop.

“I’m supposed to be buying a bag of peat,” Ray said. “Only I don’t want to.” He went around Dennis and yanked open a refrigerator. Under the egg shelf there was taped a picture of a girl in cherry-colored panty hose. “I’m avoiding something,” he said. He pulled a Coca-Cola from a six-pack and shut the door. He sat down. “My niece is on the way. I’m avoiding her arrival.”

“The good one?” Gene said.

“The good one’s here already. I pushed her in the swing this morning until she got dizzy. This is the other one. The nun.” Ray held the can off and pulled the aluminum tab.

“Don’t bring her here,” Gene said. “I do not need that.”

“Whatever you do,” Dennis said.

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Ray.

“You can bring that Melissa again,” Dennis said.

“I wouldn’t do that, either. You all bored her.” Ray drank from the can.

A short black man came up the steps, holding a chamois cloth. His shirt and pants were drenched.

“Charlie,” Ray said, tucking his chin to swallow a belch. “Looking nice.”

“They got me with the sprinklers,” Charlie said. “They waited all morning to get me.”

“Well, they’ll do that,” Dennis said.

“I know it,” the black man said.

“Because they’re bored,” Ray said. He sat forward. “I ought to go set a fire and give them something to think about.”

“I wish you would,” Charlie said. He pulled off his shirt.

“WHY THE HELL IS HE at the lead?” Melissa said. She was looking at Father Mulby, who wore an ankle cast. They were in the big basement hall at St. Anne’s, and the priest was carrying a cafeteria tray. Fifty or sixty people waited in line behind him to collect plates of spaghetti and bowls of salad.

“Lookit,” Ray said. “You and Sister Mary Clare find a seat and have a talk. Penny and I’ll fill some trays and bring them over.”

“No, no,” the nun said. “It feels good to stand. I’ve been sitting in a car all day.”

“Besides, we couldn’t think of anything to tell each other,” Melissa said.

“Melissa, there’s a lot I want to talk about with you.”

“I’m sure.”

“There is,” Sister said.

“Hey,” Ray said to Melissa, “just go grab us a good table if you want to sit down.”

“I do,” Melissa said. She left her place in line and followed Father Mulby, who had limped to the front of the room and was sitting down at one of the long tables. She introduced herself and asked if she could join him.

“It’s reserved,” he said. “That seat’s reserved for Father Phaeton. Just move over to that side, please.” The priest indicated a chair across the table.

“Okay, okay,” Melissa said. “When he gets here, I’ll jump up.” She sat down anyway. Her long hair lifted from around her throat and waved in the cool exhaust of a window fan.

Father Mulby glanced across the room and lit a Camel over his spaghetti. “I guess I can’t start until everyone’s in place,” he said.

“That’ll be an hour,” Melissa said. “Here’s Father Phaeton,” Mulby said.

Melissa changed sides. Ray and Sister Mary Clare joined them and sat down, with Melissa in between. Penny came last. She looked embarrassed to be carrying two trays, one loaded with silverware, napkins, and water glasses.

Ray passed the food and utensils around. “Someone will be bringing soft drinks,” he said to Melissa.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“No,” Father Mulby said. “We don’t serve coffee anymore. The urns and all.”

“I’d like to be excommunicated,” Melissa told him. “I want the thirteen candles dashed to the ground, or whatever, and I want a letter from Rome.”

“I don’t know,” the old priest said. He forked some salad lettuce into his mouth. “If you kick your sister or push me out of this chair onto the floor, I can excommunicate you.”

“What’s this about, Father?” said Sister Mary Clare.

“Nothing,” Ray said. “Just your sister.”

Melissa leaned toward him and said, “Blah, blah, blah.” She pushed her plate to one side. “I just have to hit Lily?” she asked Mulby.

“That would be plenty for me,” he said.

Ray said, “Eat something, Melissa. Act your age.”

“Don’t mind me,” she said, leaning over the table. She batted the priest’s eating hand. “Is that good enough?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mulby said.

Father Phaeton, a man with red hair and bad skin, asked Melissa to pass the Parmesan cheese.

“Ignore her, if you can, Father Mulby,” Ray said. “I’m sure it’s her blood week.”

“And the saltcellar, too,” Father Phaeton added.

Mulby jerked forward. His large hand closed down on Melissa’s wrist. “It’s not that,” he said to Ray. “I can tell that about a woman by holding her hand, and it’s not that.”

PENNY WAS LYING ON THE sofa at home. She had a folded washcloth across her forehead. Her eyes were pressed shut against the pain in her head, and tears ran over her cheekbones.

“It’s not necessarily a migraine,” Ray told her. He had drawn a wing chair up beside the sofa. “My head’s pounding, too. Could’ve been the food.”

“I don’t think church food could hurt anybody, Ray,” said Penny.

The nieces were sitting cross-legged on the rug. “Why not?” Sister Mary Clare said. “It’s not blessed or anything. Myself, I’ve been woozy ever since we ate.”

“I just meant they’re so clean at St. Anne’s,” Penny said. “And none of you are sick like I am. Don’t try to convince yourselves you are.”

“I’m not sick,” Melissa said.

“You didn’t eat a mouthful,” Sister Mary Clare said. She exhaled and stood up.

“I wonder why you visit us every year, Melissa,” Penny said.

“Do you mind it?” Melissa asked. “If you do—”

“She doesn’t,” Ray said.

“No,” Penny said, “I don’t mind. I just wonder if you girls could find something to do outside for a bit.”

“Lily can push me in the swing,” Melissa said. “Okay, Lily?”

Penny said, “You should have talked to Father Phaeton, Melissa. They say he’s dissatisfied with the life.”

“That would have been the thing,” Ray said. He told the nieces, “Maybe I’ll go out back with you, so Penny can get better.”

Penny took his hand and squeezed it.

“Maybe I won’t,” he said. He turned the washcloth on his wife’s brow.

Sister Mary Clare stood in the moonlight by a tomato stake. She was fingering her rosary beads.

“Don’t be doing that,” Melissa said. She moved down to the end of the lawn, where it was bordered by a shallow stream. She bent over the water. In the moonlight, she saw a school of minnows swerve over a fold in the mud next to an old bike tire.

Sister Mary Clare followed Melissa and said, behind her, “I won’t be seeing you again. I’m going into cloister.”

Melissa leaned against a tall tree. She dug her thumbnail into a bead of sweet gum on the bark.

“And I’m taking a vow of silence,” the nun said. “Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“I think it’s a good idea, and probably what you want. I’m glad.”

“If you care, I’m not very happy,” Sister said.

“You were never happy,” Melissa said. “The last time I saw you laughing was the day that swing broke. Remember that day?”

“Yes. Ray was in it when it went.”

Melissa smiled. “He used to pay me a quarter to sit on his lap and comb his hair.”

“I know,” Sister said. “He still would.”

Melissa hugged herself with her bare arms. “It won’t matter before long. I’m getting old.”

“So is Ray,” Sister said. “But he’s why you come here, I think.”

“So what? There aren’t many people I like, Lily.”

“Me neither.”

“Well, there you are,” Melissa said. “The miracle is, I keep having such a good time. It almost seems wrong.”

“You still do?”

“Every day,” Melissa said, heading back for the stream. “Such a wonderful time.”

[elisabettacormac]

Author: Ludovic Janvier from France Title: Face

Ludovic Janvier

Face

Translated by William H. Matheson and Emma Kafalenos

so it’s incapacious that we want to write… at least the semensea… a bit of the… sneering vampire on top of the numbed woman… great possessor but with the eyes… never show to fly off in into the easy bodies of fables where he indulges credulous in all his exploits… there the stunning erection… there the ocean’s spasms… there dreadful sperm… but forbidden… and as if forbidden facing bodies under sun… true bodies walking with long strides… there refused in advance… there prowls about his eye crafty as if starving parading in front of whores high-booted thighs nude up to the flower all of them men hesitant in cavalcade…. And at the first warning where was he seen so long ago… but deployed on the cute one standing up warm proving in amazement… becoming tense at least toward a flash of piquant… a glance at the intimate mist… in order to come back from sugary fireworks rending right in the silk… exiles… secures… exiles… secures… exiles…

they could verify it on him hands and mouths greedy then patient then resigned while waiting for their choppers to give up… may faith come… and the little head rise… waking he reels about hindered from homo into hetero… dreaming he seeks a beautiful object on which to graft himself champion…one night isn’t he found at a contest of hands to groin… at an official masturbation with a entry of philes and manes attentively in concert… seated the nearest competitor extricates from the bulging linen an enormous… violet… formidable muscle… proof as ever… his flail hand can scarcely get around it… with a musician’s gesture he lightly caresses the tumescence… a few seconds… one tour the summons the rumbling when the giant contracts… miraculous extorsion… gushes to the sky in a prodigious stream and then a translucent puddle… the scene stupefies then fades… let’s not talk about another night without seeing him on his back under an assembly of crimsoned and evil members enormous in a circle swallowing with great gulps…this grail lasts a while then is forgotten… a long time in the same blackness a tall nude young brunette with movements slow as foliage swoons at the very instant when he is ready to melt in her… to diffuse there burning… this idol’s long seasons… then presto vanishes like everything else… and that’s why restricted diet mental feast he trots through the world like a true mongoloid of fuckery… not trots… floats rather… minuscule artaban under the swellings of gossip… hydrocephalic for images… glider big eye on faces searching the searched…on glances playing dirty… on the recruiting symphony of gestures… on legs lifted high… passing every festival lost… then punish sun and self… paid in the cinema wishing the deluge or eternal winter on himself living women living men… then frenzy fury in his head flowing into shadow where at least here is a respite of untroubled seeing… then each time the same beating heart… blinded by the habitual blackness just as soon as the door is closed… the cavern… ah to be there… relax that’s it… peace to the eye that searches between two heads for the jumble of lights the ink of darkness on the visible grain of the canvas… steeps there crystalline cornea iris… shakes off the wetness…

all the profiles in the hall are swept away at once by the light of the image… the screen is a white shore… all the profiles at once in the dark… the blackness of the sky at night… after having stood next to him her face lifted she moved back to a corner of the room her eyes sparkling in the semi-darkness the spot of her long white dress on the darkness of the partition the darkness of the wood the darkness of the railing showing up like lace on the only wall bathed by the moon before long discovered by the camera that revolved isn’t it pretty… all around the croaking of toads… enormous once no doubt with beating hearts visible within their throats… branches are bent by a racing in the wild ramshackle park… flow and ebb of the sea running against the sandbar… breaking into a frothy sibilant on the beach below… it is she… her lips full-fleshed…her eyes aquaslut… her head thrown back… it is she whom he’ll see again when awakened he returns to his sun then to his shadow to his walls to his night he will seize himself stiff vibrant distended he will flocculate a handful dazzled with images ah do we ever love the cinema… seeing her… someone sees her question in a rough voice the native servant coming back up from the beach his tone nude and wet… imagining her… someone imagines her leaning region him drinking salt and water… the double hem of her lips together then apart then together greedy on the black supple shining skin imagined seen gluttonous is male searching for the groin for the thick unsheathed stiff muscle to bite to lick suck to swallow up eat me drink me bitch it’s ava she’s eating us yum he mouth around…

and you can believe that scarcely defended by a rampart of a similar shadow he is going to glide still seated the dreamer to the sea with words from another beach same thirst… there… the water rises… seethes… spreads out on tiles of foam its flabella… froths… goes down… is drunk… rises again… etc… seen from behind she is walking there her feet bare her breasts high her uncovered legs shining with water her long thighs where her short dress stops salt… her feet shake off sand at every step... no doubt at the bottom of each imprint is a bit of sea water… remains of salt… seeing the rifle slowly aimed… seeing its long black scope lined up on top of the barrel… seeing the thick lens where four clear lines from the two diameters of a circle… sand salt in the air seeing at their intersections a bull’s eye drawn in… it is the ideal center the point over there where the bullet should be imbedded… seeing riffle scope lens in our eyesight move up the length of the distant back divide it into four surfaces plus the fragile center reach the neck search for the nape find it bending deviating from the axis at every step lose it find it again in the fragile center human life in the bull’s-eye drawn in look for the rhythm of the deviations lose it find it again center more exactly on the delicate area seeing there the tanned skin of the neck below the short hair… the bullet would puncture the epidermis shatter the vertebra medulla cerebellum gush into the mouth immediately filled with blood… the woman walking not knowing near the water exposed… she ignores… keeps one foot one foot not firing or is he going to tear the sade to bits for us… the camera leaves her… there is the sound as if in a dream… the camera recaptures her… seeing her fall she falls seeing her fall to her knees rolling slowly on the sand to her side… immobilized… the is immobilized… the water sparkles… it rises to her mouth… she might drown… it beats on her dress plastered to her breasts her crotch her thighs… it falls back carries off a little blood… the following wave… spit your blood spit… froth… comes up to beat against the darkened dress… salt in her mouth… water sparkles in the sun… enters the open mouth falls back roseate goes back the length of the saturated sand… a little blood mingles with the last bubbles with the pellicle of water that glided toward the next lapping wave scintillating all along its fringe of foam… dead eyes closed now nude drowned by the green water the length of the body lying on its right side… empties the mouth… washes the smile upon the teeth… disturbs as it rises the long dark hair on her head the rich pubic hair smooths them mas it falls back glides to the sea… ah the cinema…

yes the best ambush is total emulsion… ambuscade for worlds for bodies that one eyes upon… well sheltered in woodland framing artaban for example is rediscovering forgotten grass… the tall half-sun half-shade with long hollows under the wind… flexible stems leaves umbels nettles shaken slow and return to their flight on foot… trampled by boots among… they crush… the pursuing… one myopic tiny green spiders… daddy longlegs spread apart bending stem after stem… ants under clover still lower… among them trampled by bare legs entwined with plants… the pursued… among them at the edge of the woods flight of skirts that rise corollas float in slow motion fall… among them learning in the penumbra lighted from below the face of a child searching in the coolness… coming from ma distance approaching unpunished traveling… dulling to the same level the lightness of organdies linens tulles in which backward there beat long legs thighs in full foam… backward on the meadow showing at the edge of the stream with white pebbles showing with little cries showing oh bitch in the lights of the shadow… washed away by the eye the least visible woman… as if… washed away by words toward sweetness… fleece… satin… the mute brunette stretched out mouth shaping a yes… pale with freckles… the black woman polishes our tongue level with her rosy night… what false vision for the voracious… what false vision in cinemaseas where a look rises washed… it was the beach polished to dead… it will be the bursting storms on silks linens plastered heavily to the breasts the long legs of innumerable… their faces damp… their lips blood on their uncovered teeth… eye to their eye immense bath full image… their look entirely on the look of the man bent over in the shadows who cinemadrinks… their eyes on the eyes of the green water in the whiteness then a wink… on the brown coffee in the immense whiteness of milk then a wink… on blue the blue water of eyes washed with tears in the rosy blood then a wink… on blue the blue water of eyes washes with tears in the rosy blood then a wink… who comes to us so it is the tall woman with the smile of regret she stops eternal at the edge of the eye… black ink… fully lighted she is the one who comes to you in her muslins her silk smiling under her big summer hat that shadows her mouth with sadness… she stops at the edge of the eye… black ink… fully lighted she sets out again from the depth comes to him one thigh one leg slowly after the other lifting the muslins lifting the silks smiling… she stops at the edge of the eye… the look the stare… sets out again from the depths comes nude toward his gaze with slow strides… heavy her breasts at each step swaying mammaries… from which sucks the lap again… ping dreamer… sucks… hides against them mouth and regrets again… raises his eyes to the smile of the mist black hair undone wan smile lost long-gone long-ago long blond locks the double pulp over the teeth of the woman stopping at the edge of the eye… although from the back one dashes forth delicate under the rain… slender from the back beset by the rain mingled with the others… although she steps through the gusts of wind… moves off wet from the storm… nude light tongue at her ass yes if her butt swept by the storm is streaming a crack then tongue can whip around inside its full… yes if your butt caught in gusts of wind by the storm in large hot drops and if streaming a crack spreads out violet eyelet in which to probe… sweet water… as you want drink lick lap slurp wig hurrah for the cinema…

and that’s the way he staggers about head first trusting in these maelstrom of shadows and lights… plunges loyal into the spiders’ caves… thread web in to the bloody subterranean passages… comes back up howling to the river banks… scaling dizzily the tower or the belfry where the grinning monster is going to swing in the sky ah… being aware above… gulps down catastrophes sated… sedated water but not today… storm pushing…sees and again sees bodies atrocious under torture bleeding lost… simpleton drinks without thirst ready for every squall… the seagull lands in the sand… barely does he wink the sucker to see himself seen… searching for memory… clinging to the time prior to the abyss that there they are all carried off at top speed the chair and the man downstream away from this rain of bullets… the thousand crystals of the image bombard the fibrillac… the concrete is far away… dark brown… shaking bullets… thunderbolt… shaking the humors…. gelatin and its bromides electric shock… all burst into stories… then he slips by smug in the cavern of glories… a cave… then he slips again and sees again… blinds himself to the shaking fabulous shocks of the emulsion upon the screen… wallowed in the procession down there… isn’t he wasting his life the devourer… when he gets up from his seat he is anesthetized… ambling away from bodies… looks… aspects… bomb here… crossing sun like night because for others the summer of the eyes… migraine… dark hidden explosion this bullet that bullet… go on… don’t look… we prefer pregnant stiff to convey even to sleep and its slow images… to convey as a schoolboy still… in the past… landscape storm… in perpetual terror… to convey the last gestures seen and again seen the looks the aspects the voices all renounced in sadness once the confusion… one and the other… if successful in confusion… storm and thunderclap….

Oh site always to see oneself seen… to write oneself written.

[elisabettacormac]

A. E. Coppard: Dusky Ruth

A. E. COPPARD

Dusky Ruth

At the close of an April day, chilly and wet, the traveller came to a country down. In the Costwolds, though the towns are small and sweet and the inns snug, the general habit of the land is bleak and bare. He had newly come upon upland roads so void of human affairs, so lonely, that they might have been made for some forgotten uses by departed men, and left to the unwitting passage of such strangers as himself. Even the undending walls, built of rough laminated rock, that detailed the far-spreading fields, had grown very old again in their courses; there were dabs of darkness, buttons of moss, and fossils on every stone. He had passed a few neighbourhoods, sometimes at the crook of a stream, or at the cross of debouching roads, where old habitations, their gangrenated thatch riddled with bird holes, had not been so much erected as just spattered about the place. Beyond these signs an odd lark or blackbird, the ruckle of partridges, or the nifty gallop of a hare, had been the only mitigation of the living loneliness that was almost as profound by day as by night. But the traveller had a care for such times and places. There are men who love to gaze with the mind at things that can never be seen, feel at least the throb of a beauty that will never be known, and hear over immense bleak reaches the echo of that which is no celestial music, but only their own hearts’ vain cries; and though his garments clung to him like clay it was with deliberate questing step that the traveller trod the single street of the town, and at last entered the inn, shuffling his shoes in the doorway for a moment and striking the raindrops from his hat. Then he turned into a small smoking-room. Leather-lined benches, much worn, were fixed to the wall under the window and in other odd corners and nooks behind mahogany tables. One wall was furnished with all the congenial gear of a bar, but without any intervening counter. Opposite a bright fire was burning, and a neatly dressed young woman sat before it in a Windsor chair, staring at the flames. There was no other inmate of the room, and as he entered the girl rose up and greeted him. He found that he could be accommodated for the night, and in a few moments his hat and scarf were removed and placed inside the fender, his wet overcoat was taken to the kitchen, the landlord, an old fellow, was lending him a roomy pair of slippers, and a maid was setting supper in an adjoining room.

He sat while this was doing and talked to the barmaid. She had a beautiful but rather mournful face as it was lit by the firelight, and when her glance was turned away from it her eyes had a piercing brightness. Friendly and well spoken as she was, the melancholy in her aspect was noticeable—perhaps it was the dim room, or the wet day, or the long hours ministering a multitude of cocktails to thirsty gallantry.

When he went to his supper he found cheering food and drink, with pleasant garniture of silver and mahogany. There were no other visitors, he was to be alone; blinds were drawn, lamps lit, and the fire at his back was comforting. So he sat long about his meal until a white-faced maid came to clear the table, discoursing to him about country things as she busied about the room. It was a long, narrow room, with a sideboard and the door at one end and the fireplace at the other. A bookshelf, almost devoid of books, contained a number of plates; the long wall that faced the windows was almost destitute of pictures, but there were hung upon it, for some inscrutable but doubtless sufficient reason, many dish-covers, solidly shaped, of the kind held in such mysterious regard and known as “willow pattern”; one was even hung upon the face of a map. Two musty prints were mixed with them, presentments of horses having a stilted extravagant physique and bestridden by images of inhuman and incommunicable dignity, clothed in whiskers, coloured jackets, and tight white breeches.

He took down the books from the shelf, but his interest was speedily exhausted, and the almanacs, the county directory, and various guide-books were exchanged for the Cotswold Chronicle. With this, having drawn the deep chair to the hearth, he whiled away the time. The newspaper amused him with its advertisements of stock shows, farm auctions, travelling quacks and conjurers, and there was a lengthy account of the execution of a local felon, one Timothy Bridger, who had murdered an infant in some shameful circumstances. This dazzling crescendo proved rather trying to the traveller; he threw down the paper.

The town was all as quiet as the hills, and he could hear no sounds in the house. He got up and went across the hall to the smoke-room. The door was shut, but there was light within, and he entered. The girl sat there much as he had seen her on his arrival, still alone, with feet on fender. He shut the door behind him, sat down, and crossing his legs puffed at his pipe, admired the snug little room and the pretty figure of the girl, which he could do without embarrassment, as her meditative head, slightly bowed, was turned away from him. He could see something of her, too, in the mirror at the bar, which repeated also the agreeable contours of bottles of coloured wines and rich liqueurs—so entrancing in form and aspect that they seemed destined to charming histories, even in disuse—and those of familiar outline containing mere spirits or small beer, for which are reserved the harsher destinies of base oils, horse medicines, disinfectants, and cold tea. There were coloured glasses for bitter wines, white glasses for sweet, a tiny leaden sink beneath them, and the four black handles of the beer engines.

The girl wore a light blouse of silk, a short skirt of black velvet, and a pair of very thin silk stockings that showed the flesh of instep and shin so plainly that he could see they were reddened by the warmth of the fire. She had on a pair of dainty cloth shoes with high heels, but what was wonderful about her was the heap of rich black hair piled at the back of her head and shadowing the dusky neck. He sat puffing his pipe and letting the loud tick of the clock fill the quiet room. She did not stir and he could move no muscle. It was as if he had been willed to come there and wait silently. That, he felt now, had been his desire all the evening; and here, in her presence, he was more strangely stirred in a few short minutes than by any event he could remember. In youth he had viewed women as futile, pitiable things that grew long hair, wore stays and garters, and prayed incomprehensible prayers. Viewing them in the stalls of the theatre from his vantage-point in the gallery, he always disliked the articulation of their naked shoulders. But still, there was a god in the sky, a god with flowing hair and exquisite eyes, whose one stride with an ardour grandly rendered took him across the whole round hemisphere to which his buoyant limbs were bound like spokes to the eternal rim and axle, his bright hair burning in the pity of the sunsets and tossing in the anger of the dawns.

Master traveller had indeed come into this room to be with this woman, and she as surely desired him, and for all its accidental occasion it was as if he, walking the ways of the world, had suddenly come upon what, what so imaginable with all permitted reverence as, well, just a shrine; and he, admirably humble, bowed the instant head.

Were there no other people within? The clock indicated a few minutes to nine. He sat on, still as stone, and the woman might have been of wax for all the movement or sound she made. There was allurement in the air between them; he had forborne his smoking, the pipe grew cold between his teeth. He waited for a look from her, a movement to break the trance of silence. No footfall in street or house, no voice in the inn but the clock, beating away as if pronouncing a doom. Suddenly it rasped out nine large notes, a bell in the town repeated them dolefully, and a cuckoo no farther than the kitchen mocked them with three times three. After that came the weak steps of the old landlord along the hall, the slam of doors, the clatter of lock and bolt, and then the silence returning unendurably upon them.

He rose and stood behind her; he touched the black hair. She made no movement or sign. He pulled out two or three combs and, dropping them into her lap, let the whole mass tumble about his hands. It had a curious harsh touch in the unravelling, but was so full and shining; black as a rook’s wings it was.

He slid his palms through it. His fingers searched it and fought with its fine strangeness; into his mind there travelled a serious thought, stilling his wayward fancy—this was no wayward fancy, but a rite accomplishing itself! (Run, run, silly man, y’are lost!) But having got so far, he burnt his boats, leaned over, and drew her face back to him. And at that, seizing his wrists, she gave him back ardour for ardour, pressing his hands to her bosom, while the kiss was sealed and sealed again. Then she sprang up and picking his scarf and hat from the fender said:

“I have been drying them for you, but the hat has shrunk a bit, I’m sure—I tried it on.”

He took them from her and put them behind him; he leaned lightly back upon the table, holding it with both his hands behind him; he could not speak.

“Aren’t you going to thank me for drying them?” she asked, picking her combs from the rug and repinning her hair.

“I wonder why we did that?” he asked, shamedly.

“It is what I’m thinking too,” she said.

“You were so beautiful about—about it, you know.”

She made no rejoinder, but continued to bind her hair, looking brightly at him under her brows. When she had finished she went close to him.

“Will that do?”

“I’ll take it down again.”

“No, no, the old man or the old woman will be coming in.”

“What of that?” he said, taking her into his arms. “Tell me your name.”

She shook her head, but she returned his kisses and stroked his hair and shoulders with beautifully melting gestures.

“What is your name? I want to call you by your name,” he said. “I can’t keep calling you Lovely Woman, Lovely Woman.”

Again she shook her head and was dumb.

“I’ll call you Ruth, then, Dusky Ruth, Ruth of the black, beautiful hair.”

“That is a nice-sounding name—I knew a deaf and dumb girl named Ruth; she went to Nottingham and married an organ-grinder—but I should like it for my name.”

“Then I give it to you.”

“Mine is so ugly.”

“What is it?”

Again the shaken head and the burning caress.

“Then you shall be Ruth; will you keep that name?

“Yes, if you give me the name I will keep it for you.”

Time had indeed taken them by the forelock, and they looked upon a ruddled world.

“I stake my one talent,” he said jestingly, “and behold it returns me

fortyfold; I feel like the boy who catches three mice with one piece of cheese.”

At ten o’clock the girl said:

“I must go and see how they are getting on,” and she went to the door.

“Are we keeping them up?”

She nodded.

“Are you tired?”

“No, I am not tired.” She looked at him doubtfully.

“We ought not to stay in here; go into the coffee room and I’ll come there in a few minutes.”

“Right,” he whispered gaily, “we’ll sit up all night.”

She stood at the door for him to pass out, and he crossed the hall to the other room. It was in darkness except for the flash of the fire. Standing at the hearth he lit a match for the lamp, but paused at the globe; then he extinguished the match.

“No, it’s better to sit in the firelight.”

He heard voices at the other end of the house that seemed to have a chiding note in them.

“Lord,” he thought, “is she getting into a row?”

Then her steps came echoing over the stone floor of the hall; she opened the door and stood there with a lighted candle in her hand; he stood at the other end of the room, smiling.

“Good night,” she said.

“Oh no, no! come along,” he protested, but not moving from the hearth.

“Got to go to bed,” she answered.

“Are they angry with you?”

“No.”

“Well, then, come over here and sit down.”

“Got to go to bed,” she said again, but she had meanwhile put her candlestick upon the little sideboard and was trimming the wick with a burnt match.

“Oh, come along, just half an hour,” he protested. She did not answer, but went on prodding the wick of the candle.

“Ten minutes, then,” he said, still not going towards her.

“Five minutes,” he begged.

She shook her head and, picking up the candlestick, turned to the door. He did not move, he just called her name: “Ruth!”

She came back then, put down the candlestick, and tiptoed across the room until he met her. The bliss of the embrace was so poignant that he was almost glad when she stood up again and said with affected steadiness, though he heard the tremor in her voice:

“I must get you your candle.”

She brought one from the hall, set it on the table in front of him, and struck the match.

“What is my number?” he asked.

“Number six room,” she answered, prodding the wick vaguely with her

match, while a slip of white wax dropped over the shoulder of the new candle.

“Number six . . . next to mine.”

The match burnt out; she said abruptly: “Good night,” took up her own

candle, and left him there.

In a few moments he ascended the stairs and went into his room. He fastened the door, removed his coat, collar, and slippers, but the rack of passion had seized him and he moved about with no inclination to sleep. He sat down, but there was no medium of distraction. He tried to read the newspaper that he had carried up with him, and without realizing a single phrase he forced himself to read again the whole account of the execution of the miscreant Bridger. When he had finished this he carefully folded the paper and stood up, listening. He went to the parting wall and tapped thereon with his fingertips.

He waited half a minute, one minute, two minutes; there was no answering sign. He tapped again, more loudly, with his knuckles, but there was no response, and he tapped many times. He opened his door as noiselessly as possible; along the dark passage there were slips of light under the other doors, the one next his own, and the one beyond that. He stood in the corridor listening to the rumble of old voices in the farther room, the old man and his wife going to their rest. Holding his breath fearfully, he stepped to her door and tapped gently upon it. There was no answer, but he could somehow divine her awareness of him; he tapped again; she moved to the door and whispered:

“No, no, go away.” He turned the handle, the door was locked.

“Let me in,” he pleaded. He knew she was standing there an inch or two beyond him.

“Hush,” she called softly. “Go away, the old woman has ears like a fox.”

He stood silent for a moment.

“Unlock it,” he urged; but he got no further reply, and feeling foolish and baffled he moved back to his own room, cast his clothes from him, doused the candle and crept into the bed with soul as wild as a storm-swept forest, his heart beating a vagrant summons. The room filled with strange heat, there was no composure for mind or limb, nothing but flaming visions and furious embraces.

“Morality . . . what is it but agreement with your own soul?”

So he lay for two hours—the clocks chimed twelve—listening with foolish persistency for her step along the corridor, fancying every light sound—and the night was full of them—was her hand upon the door.

Suddenly, then—and it seemed as if his very heart would abash the house with its thunder—he could hear distinctly someone knocking on the wall. He got quickly from his bed and stood at his door, listening. Again the knocking was heard, and having half-clothed himself he crept into the passage, which was now in utter darkness, trailing his hand along the wall until he felt her door; it was standing open. He entered her room and closed the door behind him. There was not the faintest gleam of light, he could see nothing. He whispered: “Ruth!” and she was standing there. She touched him, but not speaking. He put out his hands, and they met round her neck; her hair was flowing in its great wave about her; he put his lips to her face and found that her eyes were streaming with tears, salt and strange and disturbing. In the close darkness he put his arms about her with no thought but to comfort her; one hand had plunged through the long harsh tresses and the other across her hips before he realized that she was ungowned; then he was aware of the softness of her breasts and the cold naked sleekness of her shoulders. But she was crying there, crying silently with great tears, her strange sorrow stifling his desire.

“Ruth, Ruth, my beautiful dear!” he murmured soothingly. He felt for the bed with one hand, and turning back the quilt and sheets, he lifted her in as easily as a mother does her child, replaced the bedding, and, in his clothes, he lay stretched beside her, comforting her. They lay so, innocent as children, for an hour, when she seemed to have gone to sleep. He rose then and went silently to his room, full of weariness.

In the morning he breakfasted without seeing her, but as he had business in the world that gave him just an hour longer at the inn before he left it for good and all, he went into the smoke-room and found her. She greeted him with curious gaze, but merrily enough, for there were other men there now—farmers, a butcher, a registrar, an old, old man. The hour passed, but not these men, and at length he donned his coat, took up his stick, and said good-bye. Her shining glances followed him to the door, and from the window as far as they could view him.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (1921)

[elisabettacormac]

Lucia Berlin: El Tim

Lucia Berlin

El Tim

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/elisabettacormac/668671375448342528

A nun stood in each classroom door, black robes floating into the hall with the wind. The voices of the first grade, praying, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. From across the hall, the second grade began, clear, Hail Mary, full of grace. I stopped in the center of the building, and waited for the triumphant voices of the third grade, their voices joined by the first grade. Our Father, Who are in heaven, by a fourth grade, then deep. Hail Mary, full of grace.

As the children grew older they prayed more quickly, so that gradually the voices began to blend, to merge into one sudden joyful chant… In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I taught Spanish in the new junior high which lay at the opposite end of the playground like a child’s colored toy. Every morning, before class, I went through the grade school, to hear the prayers, but also simply to go into the building, as one would go in a church. The school had been a mission, built in 1700 by the Spaniards, built to stand in the desert for a long time. It was different from other old schools, whose stillness and solidity is still a shell for the children who pass through them. It had kept the peace of a mission, of a sanctuary.

The nuns laughed in the grade school, and the children laughed. The nuns were all old, not like tired old women who clutch their bags at a bus stop, but proud, loved by their god and by their children. They responded to love with tenderness, with soft laughter that was contained, guarded, behind the heavy wooden doors.

Several junior high nuns swept through the playground, checking for cigarette smoke. These nuns were young and nervous. They taught “underprivileged children,” “borderline delinquents,” and their faces were tired, sick of a blank stare. They could not use awe or love like the grade school nuns. Their recourse was impregnability, indifference to the students who were their duty and their life.

The rows of windows in the ninth grade flashed as Sister Lourdes opened them, as usual, seven minutes before the bell. I stood outside the initialed orange doors, watching my ninth-grade students as they paced back and forth in front of the wire fence, their bodies loose and supple, necks bobbing as they walked, arms and legs swaying to a beat, to a trumpet that no one else could hear.

They leaned against the wire fence, speaking in English-Spanish-Hipster dialect, laughing soundlessly. The girls wore the navy blue uniforms of the school. The girls wore the navy blue uniforms of the school. Like muted birds they flirted wit the boys, who coked their plumed heads, who were brilliant in orange or yellow or turquoise pegged pants. They wore open black shirts or v-neck sweaters with nothing under them, so that their crucifixes gleamed against their smooth brown chests… the crucifix of the pachuco which was also tattooed on the back of their hand.

‘Good morning, dear.’

‘Good morning, Sister.’ Sister Lourdes had come outside to see I the seventh grade was in line.

Sister Lourdes was the principal. She had hired me, reluctantly having to pay someone to teach, since none of the nuns spoke Spanish.

‘So, as a lay teacher,’ she had said, ‘the first one at San Marco, it may be hard for you to control the students, especially since many of them are almost as old as you. You must not make the mistake that many of my young nuns do. Do not try to be their friend. These students think in terms of power and weakness. You must keep your power… through aloofness, discipline, punishment, control. Spanish is an elective, give as many F’s as you like. During the first three weeks you may transfer any of your pupils to my Latin class. I have had no volunteers.’ She smiled. ‘You will find this a great help.’

The first month had gone well. The threat of the Latin class was an advantage: by the end of the second week I had eliminated seven students. It was a luxury to teach such a relatively small class, and a class with the lower quarter removed. My native Spanish helped a great deal. It was a surprise to them that a “gringa” could speak as well as their parents, better even than them. They were impressed that I recognized their obscene words, their slang for marijuana and police. They worked hard. Spanish was close, important to them. They behaved well, but their sullen obedience and their automatic response were an affront to me.

They mocked words and expressions that I used and began to use them as much as me. “La piña…” they jeered, because of my hair, and soon the girls cut their hair like mine. “The idiot can’t write,” they whispered, when I printed on the blackboard, but they began to print all of their papers.

These were not yet the pachucos, the hoods that they tried hard to be, flipping a switch blade into a desk, blushing when it slipped and fell. They were not yet saying “You can’t show me nothing.” They waited with a shrug, to be shown. So what could I show them? The world I knew was no better than the one they had the courage to defy.

I watched Sister Lourdes whose strength was not, as mine, a front for their respect. The students saw her faith in the god, in the life that she had chosen, they honoured it, never letting her know their tolerance for the harshness she used for control.

She couldn’t laugh with them either. They laughed only in derision, only when someone revealed himself with a question, with a smile, a mistake, a fart. Always, as I silence their mirthless laughter, I thought of the giggles, the shouts, the grade-school counterpoint of joy.

Once a week I laughed with the ninth grade. On Mondays, when suddenly there would be a banging on the flimsy metal door, an imperious BOOM BOOM BOOM that rattled the windows and echoed through the building. Always at the tremendous noise I would jump, and the class would laugh at me.

‘Come in!’ I called, and the knocking would stop, and we laughed, when it was only a tiny first grader. He would pad in sneakers to my desk.

‘Good morning.’ he whispered. ’May I have the cafeteria list?’

Then he would tiptoe away and slam the door, which was funny too.

***

‘Mrs. Lawrence, would you come inside for a minute?’ I followed Sister Lourdes into her office and waited while she rang the bell.

‘Timothy Sánchez is coming back to school.’ She paused, as if I should react. ‘He has been in the detention home, one of many times—for theft and narcotics. They feel that he should finish school as quickly as possible. He is much older than his class, and according to their tests he is an exceptionally bright boy. It says here that he should be “encouraged and challenged.”’

‘Is there any particular thing you want me to do?’

‘No, in fact. I can’t advise you at all… he is quite a different problem. I thought I should mention it. His parole officer will be checking on his progress.’

The next morning was Halloween, and the grade school had come in costume. I lingered to watch the witches, the hundreds of devils who trembled their morning prayers. The bell had rung when I got to the door of the ninth grade. “Sacred Heart of Mary, pray for us.” They said. I stood at the door while Sister Lourdes took the roll. They rose as I entered the room. “Good morning.” Their chairs scraped as they sat down.

The room became still. “El Tim!” someone whispered.

He stood in the door, silhouetted like Sister Lourdes from the skylight in the hall. He was dressed in black, his shirt open the waist, his pants low and tight on lean hips. A gold crucifix glittered from a heavy chain. He was half-smiling, looking down at Sister Lourdes, his eyelashes creating jagged shadows down his gaunt cheeks. His black hair was long and straight. He smoothed it back with long slender fingers, quick, like a bird.

I watched the awe of the class. I looked at the young girls, the pretty young girls who whispered in the rest room not of dates or love but of marriage and abortion. They were tensed, watching him, flushed and alive.

Sister Lourdes stepped into the room.

‘Sit here, Tim.’

She motioned to a seat in front of my desk.

He moved across the room, his broad back stopped, neck forwards, tssch-tssch, tssch-tssch, the pachuco beat.

‘Dig the crazy nun!’ He grinned, looking at me. The class laughed.

‘Silence!’ Sister Lourdes said.

She stood beside him. ‘This is Mrs. Lawrence. Here is your Spanish book.’

He seemed not to hear her. Her beads rattled nervously.

‘Button your shirt.’ Sternly, she said, and repeated: ‘Button your shirt!’

He moved his hands to his chest, began with one to move the button in the light, with the other to inspect the buttonhole. The nun shoved his hands away, fumbled with his shirt until it was buttoned.

‘Don’t know how I ever got along without you, Sister.’ he drawled.

She left the room.

It was Tuesday, dictation. ‘Take out a paper and pencil.’

The class complied automatically.

‘You too, Tim.’

‘Paper.’ he commanded quietly. Sheets of paper fought for his desk.

‘Llegó el hijo.’ I dictated. Tim stood up and started toward the back of the room.

‘Pencil’s broken…’, he said. His voice was deep and hoarse, like the hoarseness people have when they are about to cry. He sharpened his pencil slowly, turning the sharpener so that it sounded like brushes on a drum.

‘No tenían fe.’ Tim stopped to put his hand on a girl’s hair.

‘Sit down.’ I said.

‘Cool it.’ he muttered. The class laughed.

He handed in a blank paper, the name “EL TIM” across the top.

***

From that day everything revolved around El Tim. He caught up quickly with the rest of the class. His test papers and his written exercises were always excellent. But the students responded only to his sullen insolence in class, to his silent, unpunishable denial. Reading aloud, conjugating on the boards, discussions, all of the things that had been almost fun were now almost impossible. The boys were flippant, ashamed to get things right; the girls embarrassed, awkward in front of him.

I began to give mostly written work, private work that I could check from desk to desk. I assigned many compositions and essays, even though this was not supposed to be done in ninth-grade Spanish. It was the only thing Tim liked to do, that he worked on intently, erasing and recopying, thumbing the pages ofa Spanish dictionary on his desk. His compositions were imaginative, perfect in grammar, always of impersonal things… and street, a tree. I wrote comments and praise on them. Sometimes I read his papers to the class, hoping that they would be impressed, encouraged by his work. Too late I realized that it only confused them for him to be praised, that he triumphed anyway with a sneer… “Pues, la tengo…” I’ve got her pegged.

Emiterio Pérez repeated everything that Tim said. Emiterio was retarded, being kept in the ninth grade until he was old enough to quit school. He passed out papers, opened windows. I had him do everything the other students did. Chuckling, he wrote endless pages of neat formless scribbles that I graded and handed back. Sometimes I would give him a B and he would be happy. Now even he would not work.

‘¿Para qué, hombre?’ Tim whispered to him.

Emiterio would become confused, looking from Tim to me. Sometimes he would cry.

Helplessly, I watched the growing confusion of the class, the confusion that even Sister Lourdes could no longer control. There was not silence now when she entered the room, but unrest… a brushing of a hand over a face, an eraser tapping, flipping pages.

The class waited. Always, slow and deep, would come Tim’s voice.

“It’s cold in here, Sister, don’t you think?” “Sister, I got something the matter with my eye, come see.”

We did not move as each time, every day, automatically buttoned Tim’s shirt. “Everything all right?” she would ask me and leave the room.

One Monday, I glanced up and saw a small child coming towards me. I glanced at the child, and then, smiling, I glanced at Tim.

‘They’re getting littler every time… have you noticed?’ he said, so only I could hear.

He smiled at me. I smiled back, weak with joy. Then with a harsh scrape he shoved back his chair and walked toward the back of the room. Halfway, he paused in front of Dolores, an ugly shy little girl. Slowly he rubbed his hands over her breasts. She moaned and ran crying from the room.

‘Come here!’ I shouted to him.

His teeth flashed. ‘Make me!’ he said.

I leaned against the desk, dizzy. ‘Get out of here, go home. don’t ever come back to my class!’

‘Sure!’ he grinned. He walked past me to the door, fingers snapping as he moved… tsch-tsch, tsch-tsch. The class was silent.

As I was leaving to find Dolores, a rock smashed through the window, landing with shattered glass on my desk.

‘What is going on!’ Sister Lourdes was at the door. I couldn’t get past her.

‘I sent Tim home.’

She was white, her bonnet shaking.

‘Mrs. Lawrence, it is your duty to handle him in the classroom.’

‘I’m sorry, Sister. I can’t do it.’

‘I will speak to the Mother Superiour,’ she said. ‘Come to my office in the morning. Get in your seat!’ she shouted at Dolores, who had come in the back door.

The nun left.

‘Turn to page 93,’ I said. ‘Eddie, read and translate the first paragraph.’

***

I didn’t go to the grade school the next morning. Sister Lourdes was waiting, sitting behind her desk. Outside the glass doors of the office, Tim leaned against the wall, his hands hooked in his belt.

Briefly, I told the nun what had happened the day before. Her head was bowed as I spoke.

‘I hope you will find it possible to regain the respect of the boy,’ she said.

‘I’m not going to have him in my class!’ I said. I stood in front of her desk, gripping the wooden edge.

‘Mrs. Lawrence, we were told that this boy needed special attention, that he needed “encouragment and challenge.”’

‘Not in junior high. He is too old and too intelligent to be here.’

‘Well, you are going to have to learn to deal with this problem.’

‘’Sister Lourdes, if you put Tim in my Spanish class, I will go to the Mother Superior, to his parole officer. I’ll tell them what happened. I’ll show them the work that my pupils did before he came and the work they have done since. I will show them Tim’s work, it doesn’t belong in the ninth grade.’’

She spoke quietly, dryly.

‘Mrs. Lawrence, this boy is our responsibility. The parole board turned him over to us. He is going to remain in your class.’ She leaned toward me, pale. ‘It is our duty as teachers to control such problems, to teach in spite of them.’

‘Well, I can’t do it.’

‘You are weak!’ she hissed.

‘Yes, I am. He has won. I can’t stand what he does to the class and to me. if he comes back, I resign.’

She slumped back in her chair. Tired, she spoke: ‘Give him another chance. A week. Then you can do as you please.’

‘All right.’

She rose and opened the door for Tim. He sat on the edge of her desk.

‘Tim.’ She began softly, ‘will you prove to me, to Mrs. Lawrence and to the class that you are sorry?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I don’t want to send you back to the detention home.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you are a bright boy. I want to see you learn something here, to graduate from San Marco’s. I want to see you go on to high school, to…’

‘Come on, Sister.’ Trim drawled. ‘You just want to button my shirt.’

‘Shut up!’ I hit him across the mouth.

My hand remained white in his dark skin. He did not move. I wanted to be sick. Sister Lourdes left the room. Tim and I stood, facing each other, listening as she started the ninth grade prayers… Blessed art thou amongst women, Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…

‘How come you hit me?’ Tim asked softly.

I started to answer him, to say, ‘Because you were insolent and unkind,’ but I saw his smile of contempt as he waited for me to say just that.

‘I hit you because I was angry. About Dolores and the rock. Because I felt hurt and foolish.’

His dark eyes searched my face. For an instant the veil was gone.

‘I guess we’re even then,’ he said.

‘Yes…’ I said. ‘Let’s go to class.’

I walked with Tim down the hall, avoiding the beat of his walk.

[elisabettacormac]

Lydia Davis: A Mown Lawn

Lydia Davis

A Mown Lawn

McSweeney, 1999

SHE HATED a mown lawn. Maybe that was because mow was the reverse of wom, the beginning of the name of what she was--a woman. A mown lawn had a sad sound to it, like a long moan. From her, a mown lawn made a long moan. Lawn had some of the letters of man, though the reverse of man would be Nam, a bad war. A raw war. Lawn also contained the letters of law. In fact, lawn was a contraction of lawman. Certainly a lawman could and did mow a lawn. Law and order could be seen as starting from lawn order, valued by so many Americans. More lawn could be made using a lawn mower. A lawn mower did make more lawn. More lawn was a contraction of more lawman. Did more lawn in America make more lawmen in America? Did more lawn make more Nam? More mown lawn made more long moan, from her. Or a lawn mourn. So often, she said, Americans wanted more mown lawn. All of America might be one long mown lawn. A lawn not mown grows long, she said: better a long lawn. Better a long lawn and a mole. Let the lawman have the mown lawn, she said. Or the moron, the lawn moron.

[elisabettacormac]

Juan Rulfo: You Don't Hear the Dogs Barking

“You up there, Ignacio, tell me if you hear some sign or see some light somewhere.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“We must be close.”

“Yes, but I can’t hear a thing.”

“Look hard.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“So much the worse for you, Ignacio.”

The men’s long, dark shadow continued moving up and down, climbing over the rocks, getting smaller and larger as it went along the edge of the arroyo. It was a single shadow, reeling.

The moon was emerging from the earth, like a round flare.

“We must be close to that village, Ignacio. Your ears aren’t covered, so try to see if you don’t hear dogs barking. Remember, they told us Tonaya was just on the other side of the hills. And we left the hills hours ago.”

“Yes, but I don’t see a sign of anything.”

“I’m getting tired.”

“Put me down.”

The old man backed up to a thick wall and bent over without letting his load down from his shoulders. Though his legs were buckling, he didn’t want to sit because then he wouldn’t have been able to lift his son’s body again. They had helped him put him on his back a while ago, hours before. And he’d been carrying him all the way since then.

“How do you feel?”

Bad.”

He said little. Less and less. At times he looked asleep. At times he looked to be cold. He trembled. He knew when the tremors were taking over his son because of his shaking and because his feet would dig into his father’s flanks like spurs. Later his son’s hands, clapped around his neck, would clutch at his head and shake him as if he were a rattle.

He grit his teeth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue and when he had finished he asked:

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Some,” Ignacio answered.

First he had said: “Put me down here... Leave me here... Go on without me. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow or when I’m a bit better.” Ignacio had said it about fifty times. Now he didn’t even say that.

The moon was there. In front of them. A large reddish moon that filled his eyes with light and lengthened and darkened their shadow on the earth even more.

“I no longer see where I’m going,” the father said.

But no one answered.

The son was up there, all lit up by the moon, with his pale face, bloodless, reflecting an opaque light. And he was underneath.

“Did you hear me, Ignacio? I’m telling you I can’t see well.”

The other one remained silent.

He continued walking, faltering. He would bend his body and straighten himself up only to falter again.

“This isn’t a road. They told us Tonaya was on the other side of the ridge. We’ve already left the ridge behind. And Tonaya is nowhere to be seen, nor is there any sound that could tell us it’s nearby. Why don’t you want to tell me what you see, since you’re up there, Ignacio?”

“Put me down, Father.”

“Do you feel bad?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get you to Tonaya no matter what. I’ll find someone to take care of you over there. They say there’s a doctor in the town. I’ll take you to him. I’ve carried you for hours and won’t drop you here so whoever is after you can finish you off.”

He staggered a little. He took two or three steps to the side and straightened himself up again.

I’ll take you to Tonaya.” “Put me down.”

His voice was faint, almost a whisper:

“I want to lie down for a while.”

“Sleep up there. After all, I’ve got a good hold on you.”

The moon was ascending, almost blue, into a clear sky. The old man’s face, drenched with sweat, filled with light. He hid his eyes so as not to look directly at it, since he could no longer hold his head straight, as it was gripped tightly between his son’s hands.

“Everything I’m doing, I’m not doing for you. I’m doing it for your late mother. Because you were her son. That’s why I’m doing it. She would reproach me if I had left you lying there, where I found you, and had not picked you up and carried you to where they can take care of you, like I’m doing. It’s she who gives me courage, not you. Starting with the fact that I owe you nothing but difficulty, nothing but humiliation, nothing but shame.”

He sweat as he spoke. But the night wind dried the sweat. And he sweated again over the dried sweat.

“I’ll break my back, but I’ll get to Tonaya with you, so the injuries they’ve inflicted on you can be healed. Although I’m sure that, once you’re well, you’ll return to your evil ways. That doesn’t matter to me anymore. As long as you go far away, where I no longer hear anything about you. As long as that happens... Because to me you’re no longer my son. I’ve cursed the blood you have from me. The part you got from me I’ve cursed. I’ve said: ‘Let the blood I gave him rot in his kidneys!’ I said it from the moment I knew you had taken to the road, robbing to make a living and killing people... and good people. And not only that, there’s my compadre Tranquilino. The man who baptized you. Who gave you your name. He had the ill luck to run into you, too. From that time on I said: ‘This can’t be my son.’ ”

“Look and see if you can see anything. Or if you hear anything. You can do it from up there, because I’m feeling deaf.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“So much the worse for you, Ignacio.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“Live with it! We must be close. It’s because it’s already very late and they must have turned the lights off in the village. But at least you should hear if the dogs are barking. Try to hear.”

“Give me water.”

“There’s no water here. There’s nothing but rocks. Hang in there. And even if there were, I wouldn’t put you down for a drink of water. No one would help me put you back up there and I can’t do it by myself.”

“I’m very thirsty and very sleepy.”

“I remember when you were born. That’s how you were then. You would wake up hungry and would eat before you went back to sleep. And your mother would give you water, because you had already gone through her milk. You wouldn’t be full. And you would get mad. I never thought that as time went by, that madness would go to your head... But that’s what happened. Your mother, may she rest in peace, wanted you to grow up strong. She thought that when you’d grown up you would look after her. You were all she had. The other child she was going to have killed her. And you would have killed her again if she were alive at this point.”

He felt the man he was carrying on his shoulders stop pressing inward with his knees and let his feet go, they were swinging from one side to the other. And he felt the head, up above, shake as if it were sobbing.

He felt thick drops fall on his head, like tears.

“Are you crying, Ignacio? The memory of your mother is making you cry, right? But you never did anything for her. You always repaid us badly. It seems as if, instead of affection, we had filled your body with malice. And now you see? They’ve wounded you. What happened to your friends? Did they kill them all? But they had no one. They might have been able to say: ‘We have no one to give our sorrows to.’ But you, Ignacio?”

***

At last the village was there. He saw the roofs shining under the moonlight. He had the impression his son’s weight was crushing him when he felt the back of his knees bend in their final effort. When he reached the first dwelling, he leaned against a wall next to the sidewalk and let go of the body, limp, as if its joints had been removed.

With difficulty, he unclenched the fingers with which his son had been clinging to his neck, and, once free, he heard the dogs barking everywhere.

“And you didn’t hear them, Ignacio?” he said. “You didn’t help me even with that hope.”

[elisabettacormac]

Juan Rulfo: You Don't Hear the Dogs Barking

“You up there, Ignacio, tell me if you hear some sign or see some light somewhere.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“We must be close.”

“Yes, but I can’t hear a thing.”

“Look hard.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“So much the worse for you, Ignacio.”

The men’s long, dark shadow continued moving up and down, climbing over the rocks, getting smaller and larger as it went along the edge of the arroyo. It was a single shadow, reeling.

The moon was emerging from the earth, like a round flare.

“We must be close to that village, Ignacio. Your ears aren’t covered, so try to see if you don’t hear dogs barking. Remember, they told us Tonaya was just on the other side of the hills. And we left the hills hours ago.”

“Yes, but I don’t see a sign of anything.”

“I’m getting tired.”

“Put me down.”

The old man backed up to a thick wall and bent over without letting his load down from his shoulders. Though his legs were buckling, he didn’t want to sit because then he wouldn’t have been able to lift his son’s body again. They had helped him put him on his back a while ago, hours before. And he’d been carrying him all the way since then.

“How do you feel?”

Bad.”

He said little. Less and less. At times he looked asleep. At times he looked to be cold. He trembled. He knew when the tremors were taking over his son because of his shaking and because his feet would dig into his father’s flanks like spurs. Later his son’s hands, clapped around his neck, would clutch at his head and shake him as if he were a rattle.

He grit his teeth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue and when he had finished he asked:

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“Some,” Ignacio answered.

First he had said: “Put me down here... Leave me here... Go on without me. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow or when I’m a bit better.” Ignacio had said it about fifty times. Now he didn’t even say that.

The moon was there. In front of them. A large reddish moon that filled his eyes with light and lengthened and darkened their shadow on the earth even more.

“I no longer see where I’m going,” the father said.

But no one answered.

The son was up there, all lit up by the moon, with his pale face, bloodless, reflecting an opaque light. And he was underneath.

“Did you hear me, Ignacio? I’m telling you I can’t see well.”

The other one remained silent.

He continued walking, faltering. He would bend his body and straighten himself up only to falter again.

“This isn’t a road. They told us Tonaya was on the other side of the ridge. We’ve already left the ridge behind. And Tonaya is nowhere to be seen, nor is there any sound that could tell us it’s nearby. Why don’t you want to tell me what you see, since you’re up there, Ignacio?”

“Put me down, Father.”

“Do you feel bad?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get you to Tonaya no matter what. I’ll find someone to take care of you over there. They say there’s a doctor in the town. I’ll take you to him. I’ve carried you for hours and won’t drop you here so whoever is after you can finish you off.”

He staggered a little. He took two or three steps to the side and straightened himself up again.

I’ll take you to Tonaya.” “Put me down.”

His voice was faint, almost a whisper:

“I want to lie down for a while.”

“Sleep up there. After all, I’ve got a good hold on you.”

The moon was ascending, almost blue, into a clear sky. The old man’s face, drenched with sweat, filled with light. He hid his eyes so as not to look directly at it, since he could no longer hold his head straight, as it was gripped tightly between his son’s hands.

“Everything I’m doing, I’m not doing for you. I’m doing it for your late mother. Because you were her son. That’s why I’m doing it. She would reproach me if I had left you lying there, where I found you, and had not picked you up and carried you to where they can take care of you, like I’m doing. It’s she who gives me courage, not you. Starting with the fact that I owe you nothing but difficulty, nothing but humiliation, nothing but shame.”

He sweat as he spoke. But the night wind dried the sweat. And he sweated again over the dried sweat.

“I’ll break my back, but I’ll get to Tonaya with you, so the injuries they’ve inflicted on you can be healed. Although I’m sure that, once you’re well, you’ll return to your evil ways. That doesn’t matter to me anymore. As long as you go far away, where I no longer hear anything about you. As long as that happens... Because to me you’re no longer my son. I’ve cursed the blood you have from me. The part you got from me I’ve cursed. I’ve said: ‘Let the blood I gave him rot in his kidneys!’ I said it from the moment I knew you had taken to the road, robbing to make a living and killing people... and good people. And not only that, there’s my compadre Tranquilino. The man who baptized you. Who gave you your name. He had the ill luck to run into you, too. From that time on I said: ‘This can’t be my son.’ ”

“Look and see if you can see anything. Or if you hear anything. You can do it from up there, because I’m feeling deaf.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“So much the worse for you, Ignacio.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“Live with it! We must be close. It’s because it’s already very late and they must have turned the lights off in the village. But at least you should hear if the dogs are barking. Try to hear.”

“Give me water.”

“There’s no water here. There’s nothing but rocks. Hang in there. And even if there were, I wouldn’t put you down for a drink of water. No one would help me put you back up there and I can’t do it by myself.”

“I’m very thirsty and very sleepy.”

“I remember when you were born. That’s how you were then. You would wake up hungry and would eat before you went back to sleep. And your mother would give you water, because you had already gone through her milk. You wouldn’t be full. And you would get mad. I never thought that as time went by, that madness would go to your head... But that’s what happened. Your mother, may she rest in peace, wanted you to grow up strong. She thought that when you’d grown up you would look after her. You were all she had. The other child she was going to have killed her. And you would have killed her again if she were alive at this point.”

He felt the man he was carrying on his shoulders stop pressing inward with his knees and let his feet go, they were swinging from one side to the other. And he felt the head, up above, shake as if it were sobbing.

He felt thick drops fall on his head, like tears.

“Are you crying, Ignacio? The memory of your mother is making you cry, right? But you never did anything for her. You always repaid us badly. It seems as if, instead of affection, we had filled your body with malice. And now you see? They’ve wounded you. What happened to your friends? Did they kill them all? But they had no one. They might have been able to say: ‘We have no one to give our sorrows to.’ But you, Ignacio?”

***

At last the village was there. He saw the roofs shining under the moonlight. He had the impression his son’s weight was crushing him when he felt the back of his knees bend in their final effort. When he reached the first dwelling, he leaned against a wall next to the sidewalk and let go of the body, limp, as if its joints had been removed.

With difficulty, he unclenched the fingers with which his son had been clinging to his neck, and, once free, he heard the dogs barking everywhere.

“And you didn’t hear them, Ignacio?” he said. “You didn’t help me even with that hope.”

[elisabettacormac]

Henry Miller: The Prescription

Henry Miller

The Prescription

The next morning I paid a visit to the museum where to my astonishment I encountered Mr. Tsoutsou in the company of the Nibelungen racketeers. lIe seemed highly embarrassed to be discovered in their presence but; as he explained to me later, Greece was still a neutral country and they had come armed with letters of introduction from men whom he once considered friends. I pretended to be absorbed in the examination of a Minoan chessboard. He pressed me to meet him in the cafe later in the day. As I was leaving the museum I got the jitterbugs so bad that I made caca in my pants. I thought of my French friend immediately. Fortunately I had in my little notebook a remedy against such ailments; it had been given me by an English traveler whom I met in a bar one night in Nice. I went back to the hotel, changed my clothes, wrapped the old ones in a bundle with the idea of throwing them in a ravine and, armed with the prescription of the English globe-trotter, I made for the drug store.

I had to walk a considerable time before I could drop the bundle unobserved. By that time the jitterbugs had come on again. I made for the bottom of the moat near a dead horse swarming with bottle-flies.

The druggist spoke nothing but Greek. Diarrhoea is one of those words you never think to include in a rough and ready vocabulary—and good prescriptions are in Latin which every druggist should know but which Greek druggists are sometimes ignorant of. Fortunately a man came in who knew: a little French. He asked me immediately if I were English and when I said yes he dashed out and in a few minutes returned with a jovial-looking Greek who turned out to be the proprietor of a cafe nearby. I explained the situation rapidly and, after a brief colloquy with the druggist, he informed me that the prescription couldn't be filled but that the druggist had a better remedy to suggest. It was to abstain from food and drink and go on a diet of soggy rice with a little lemon juice in it. The druggist was of the opinion that it was nothing—It would pass in a few days—everybody gets it at first.

I went back to the cafe with the big fellow—Jim he called himself—and listened to a long story about his life in Montreal where he had amassed a fortune, as a restaurateur, and then lost it all in the stock market: He was delighted to speak English again. “Don't touch the water here," he said. "My water comes from a spring twenty miles away. That's why I have such a big clientele."

We sat there talking about the wonderful winters in Montreal. Jim had a special drink—prepared for me which he said would do me good. I was wondering where to get a good bowl of thick: soupy rice. Beside me was a man puffing away at a nargileh; he seemed to be in a stony trance. Suddenly I was back: in Paris, listening to my occult friend Urbanski who had gone one winter's night to a bordel in Montreal and when he emerged it was Spring. I have been to Montreal myself but somehow the image of it which I retain is not mine but Urbanski's.

I see myself standing in his shoes, waiting for a streetcar on the edge of the town. A rather elegant woman comes along blindfolded in furs. She's also waiting for the street car. How did Krishnamurti's name come up? And then she's speaking of Topeka, Kansas, and it seems as if I had lived there all my life. The hot toddy also came in quite naturally. We're at the door of a.big house that has the air of a deserted mansion. A colored woman opens the door. It's her place, just as she described it. A warm, cosy place too. Now and then the door-bell rings. There's the sound of muffled laughter, of glasses clinking, of slippered feet slapping through the hall…

I had listened to this story so intently that it had become a part of my own life. I could feel the soft chains she had slipped around him, the too comfortable bed, the delicious, drowsy indolence of the pasha who had retired from the world during a season of snow and ice. In the Spring he had made his escape but I, I had remained and sometimes, like now, when I forget myself, I'm there in a hotbed of roses trying to make clear to her the mystery of Arjuna's decision.

[elisabettacormac]

Henry Miller: Herakleion

Henry Miller

Herakleion

I had in my pocket a card of introduction to the leading literary figure of Crete, a friend of Katsimbalis. Towards the evening I found him in the cafe where the Germans had been hatching their Wagnerian machinations.

I shall call him Mr. Tsoutsou as I have unfortunately' forgotten his name. Mr. Tsoutsou spoke French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, demotic Greek, newspaper Greek and ancient Greek. He was a composer, poet, scholar and lover of food and drink. He began by asking me about James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Andre Gide, Breton, Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Lewis Carroll, Monk Lewis, Heinrich Georg and Rainer Marla Rilke. I say he asked me about them, much like you would ask about a relative or a mutual friend. He spoke of them as if they were all alive, which they are, thank God. I rubbed my head. He started.oft on Aragon—Had I read Le Paysan de.Paris? Did I remember the Passage Jouffroy in Paris? What did I think of St. Jean Perser. And of Nadja of Breton? Had I been to Knossus yet? I ought to stay a few weeks at least—he would take me over the island from one end to another. He was a very hale and hearty fellow and when he understood that I liked to eat and drink he beamed most approvingly. He regretted sincerely that he was not free for the evening, but hoped to see me the following day; he wanted to introduce me to the little circle of literati in Herakleion. He was excited by the fact that I came from America and begged me to tell him something about New York which I found it almost impossible to do because I had long ceased to identify myself with that odious city.

I went back to the hotel for a nap. There were three beds in the room, all of them very comfortable. I read carefully the sign warning the clients to refrain from tipping the employees. The room cost only about seventeen cents a night and I became involved willy-nilly in a fruitless speculation as to how many drachmas one would give as a tip if one could tip. There were only three or four clients in the hotel. Walking through the wide corridors looking for the W. C. I met the maid, an angelic sort of spinster with straw hair and watery blue eyes who reminded me vividly of the Swedenborgian caretaker of the Maison Balzac in Passy. She was bringing me a glass of water on a tray made of lead, zinc and tin. I undressed and as I was pulling in the blinds I observed two men with a stenographer gazing at me from the window of some outlandish commercial house across the way. It seemed unreal, this transaction of abstract business in a place like Herakleion. The typewriter looked surrealistic and the men with sleeves rolled up as in commercial houses everywhere appeared fantastically like the freaks of the Western world who move grain and corn and wheat around in carload lots by means of the telephone, the ticker, the telegraph. Imagine what it would be like to find, two business men and a stenographer on Easter Island!, Imagine how a typewriter would sound in that Oceanic silence!

I fell back on the bed and into a deep, drugged sleep. No tipping allowed-that was the last thought and a very beautiful one to a weary traveller.

When I awoke it was dark. I opened the blinds and looked down the forlorn main street which was now deserted. I heard a telegraph instrument clicking. I got into my things and hurried to the restaurant near the fountain.

The waiter seemed to expect me and stood ready to translate for me into that Iroquois English which the itinerant Greek has acquired in the course of his wanderings. I ordered some cold fish with the skin 'on it and a bottle of dark-red Cretan wine. While waiting to be served I noticed a man peering through the large plate-glass window; he walked away and came back again in a few minutes. Finally he made up his mind to walk in. He walked directly up to my table and addressed me in English.

Was I not Mr. Miller who had arrived by plane a few hours ago? I was. He begged leave to introduce himself.

He was Mr. So-and-So, the British Vice-Consul at Herakleion. He had noticed that I was an American, a writer.

He was always happy to make the acquaintance of an American. He paused a moment, as if embarrassed, and then went on to say that his sole motive for introducing himself was to let me know that as long as I remained in Crete I was to consider his humble services entirely at my disposal. He said that he was originally from: Smyrna and that every Greek" from Smyrna was eternally indebted to the American people. He said that there was no favor too great for me to ask of him.

The natural reply was to ask him to sit down and share a meal with me, which I did. He explained that he would be unable to accept the honor as he was obliged to dine in the Qosom of his family, but-would I do him the honor of taking a coffee with him and his wife at their home after dinner? As the representative of the great American people (not at all sure of the heroic role we had played in the great disaster of Smyrna) I most graciously accepted, rose, bowed, shook his hand and escorted him to the door where once again we exchanged polite thanks and mutual felicitations. I went back to the table, unskinned the cold fish and proceeded to wet my whistle.

The meal was even lousier than at noon, but the service was extraordinary. The whole restaurant was aware that a distinguished visitor had arrived and was partaking with them of their humble food. Mr. Tsoutsou and his wife appeared for just a moment to see how I was faring, commented bravely on the delicious, appetizing appearance of the skinned fish and disappeared with bows and salaams which sent an electric thrill through the assembled patrons of Herakleion's most distinguished restaurant. I began to feel as though something of vast import were about to happen. I ordered the waiter to send the chasseur out for a coffee and cognac. Never before had a vice-consul or any form of public servant other than a constable or gendarme sought me out in a public place. The plane was responsible for it. It was like a letter of credit.

The home of the vice-consul was rather imposing for Herakleion. In truth, it was more like a museum than a home. I felt somewhat hysterical; somewhat disoriented.

The vice-consul was a good, kind-hearted man but vain as a peacock. He drummed nervously on the arm of the chair, waiting impatiently for his wife to leave off about Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest et cetera in order to con[1]fide that he was the author of a book on Crete. He kept telling his wife that I was a journalist, an insult which normally I find hard to swallow, but in this case I found it easy not to take offense since the vice-consul considered all writers to be journalists. He pressed a button and very sententiously commanded the maid to go to the library and find him a copy of the book he had written on Crete.

He confessed that he had never written a book before but, owing to the general state of ignorance and confusion regarding Crete in the mind of the average tourist, he had deemed it incumbent upon him to put down what he knew about his adopted land in more or less eternal fashion. He admitted that Sir Arthur Evans had expressed it all in unimpeachable style but then there were little things, trifles by comparison of course, which a work of that scope and grandeur could not hope to encompass.

He spoke in this pompous, ornate, highly fatuous way about his masterpiece. He said that a journalist like myself would be one of the few to really appreciate what he had done for the cause of Crete et cetera. He handed me the book to glance at. He handed it over as it it were the Gutenberg Bible. I took one glance and realized immediately that I was dealing with one of the "popular masters of reality," a blood-brother to the man who had, painted "A Rendezvous with the Soul." He inquired in a pseudo-modest way if the English were all right, because English was not his native tongue. The implication was that if he had done it in Greek it would be beyond criticism. I asked him politely where I might hope to obtain a copy of this obviously extraordinary work whereupon he informed me that if I came to his office in the morning he would bestow one upon me as a gift, as a memento of this illustrious occasion which had culminated in, the meeting of two, minds thoroughly attuned to the splendors of, the past. This was only the beginning of a cataract of flowery horseshit which I had to swallow before going through' the motions of saying good-night. Then came the Smyrna disaster with a harrowing, detailed recital of the horrors which the Turks perpetrated on the helpless Greeks and the merciful intervention of the American people which no, Greek would ever forget until his dying day. I tried desperately, while he spun out the horrors and atrocities, to recall what I had been doing at this black moment in the history of Greece. Evidently the disaster had occurred during one of those long intervals when I had ceased to read the newspapers. I hadn't the faintest remembrance of any such catastrophe. To the best of my recollection the event must have taken place during the year when I was looking for a job without the slightest intention of taking one.

It reminded me that, desperate as I thought myself then to be, I had not even bothered to look through the columns of the want ads.

Next morning I took the bus in the direction of Knossus.

[elisabettacormac]

Henry Miller: The Dordogne

Henry Miller

The Dordogne

A few months before the war broke out I decided to take a long vacation. I had long wanted to visit the valley of the Dordogne, for one thing. So I packed my valise and took the train for Rocamadour where I arrived early one morning about sun up, the moon still gleaming brightly. It was a stroke of genius on my part to make the tour of the Dordogne region before plunging into the bright and hoary world of Greece. Just to glimpse the black, mysterious river at Domme from the beautiful bluff at the edge of the town is something to be grateful for all one's life. To me this river, this country, belong to the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. It is not French, not Austrian, not European even: it is the country of enchantment which the poets have staked out and which they alone may lay claim to. It is the nearest thing to Paradise this side of Greece. Let us call it the Frenchman's paradise, by way of making a concession. Actually it must have been a paradise for many thousands of years. I believe it must have been so for the era-Magnon man, despite the fossilized evidences of the great caves which point to a condition of life rather bewildering and terrifying. I believe that the Cro-Magnon man settled here because he was extremely intelligent and had a highly developed sense of beauty.

I believe that in him the religious sense was already highly developed and that it flourished here even if he lived like an animal in the depths of the caves. I believe that this great peaceful region of France will always be a sacred spot for man and that when the cities have killed off the poets this will be the refuge and the cradle of the poets to come. I repeat, it was most important for me to have seen the Dordogne: it gives me hope for the future of the race, for the future of the earth itself. France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.

#Henry Miller #River Dordogne

[elisabettacormac]

Gertrude Stein: Roastbeef

Gertrude Stein

Roastbeef

Roastbeef In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.

Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption.

The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reëstablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a surface, and every time there is an exception there is an exception and every time there is a division there is a dividing. Any time there is a surface there is a surface and every time there is a suggestion there is a suggestion and every time there is silence there is silence and every time that is languid there is that there then and not oftener, not always, not particular, tender and changing and external and central and surrounded and singular and simple and the same and the surface and the circle and the shine and the succor and the white and the same and the better and the red and the same and the centre and the yellow and the tender and the better, and altogether.

Considering the circumstances there is no occasion for a reduction, considering that there is no pealing there is no occasion for an obligation, considering that there is no outrage there is no necessity for any reparation, considering that there is no particle sodden there is no occasion for deliberation. Considering everything and which way the turn is tending, considering everything why is there no restraint, considering everything what makes the place settle and the plate distinguish some specialties. The whole thing is not understood and this is not strange considering that there is no education, this is not strange because having that certainly does show the difference in cutting, it shows that when there is turning there is no distress.

In kind, in a control, in a period, in the alteration of pigeons, in kind cuts and thick and thin spaces, in kind ham and different colors, the length of leaning a strong thing outside not to make a sound but to suggest a crust, the principal taste is when there is a whole chance to be reasonable, this does not mean that there is overtaking, this means nothing precious, this means clearly that the chance to exercise is a social success. So then the sound is not obtrusive. Suppose it is obtrusive suppose it is. What is certainly the desertion is not a reduced description, a description is not a birthday.

Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkning drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the stouter symmetry.

Around the size that is small, inside the stern that is the middle, besides the remains that are praying, inside the between that is turning, all the region is measuring and melting is exaggerating.

Rectangular ribbon does not mean that there is no eruption it means that if there is no place to hold there is no place to spread. Kindness is not earnest, it is not assiduous it is not revered.

Room to comb chickens and feathers and ripe purple, room to curve single plates and large sets and second silver, room to send everything away, room to save heat and distemper, room to search a light that is simpler, all room has no shadow.

There is no use there is no use at all in smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual.

Why should that which is uneven, that which is resumed, that which is tolerable why should all this resemble a smell, a thing is there, it whistles, it is not narrower, why is there no obligation to stay away and yet courage, courage is everywhere and the best remains to stay.

If there could be that which is contained in that which is felt there would be a chair where there are chairs and there would be no more denial about a clatter. A clatter is not a smell. All this is good.

The Saturday evening which is Sunday is every week day. What choice is there when there is a difference. A regulation is not active. Thirstiness is not equal division.

Anyway, to be older and ageder is not a surfeit nor a suction, it is not dated and careful, it is not dirty. Any little thing is clean, rubbing is black. Why should ancient lambs be goats and young colts and never beef, why should they, they should because there is so much difference in age.

A sound, a whole sound is not separation, a whole sound is in an order.

Suppose there is a pigeon, suppose there is.

Looseness, why is there a shadow in a kitchen, there is a shadow in a kitchen because every little thing is bigger.

The time when there are four choices and there are four choices in a difference, the time when there are four choices there is a kind and there is a kind. There is a kind. There is a kind. Supposing there is a bone, there is a bone. Supposing there are bones. There are bones. When there are bones there is no supposing there are bones. There are bones and there is that consuming. The kindly way to feel separating is to have a space between. This shows a likeness.

Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, hope in tables, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates.

Tin is not a can and a stove is hardly. Tin is not necessary and neither is a stretcher. Tin is never narrow and thick.

Color is in coal. Coal is outlasting roasting and a spoonful, a whole spoon that is full is not spilling. Coal any coal is copper.

Claiming nothing, not claiming anything, not a claim in everything, collecting claiming, all this makes a harmony, it even makes a succession.

Sincerely gracious one morning, sincerely graciously trembling, sincere in gracious eloping, all this makes a furnace and a blanket. All this shows quantity.

Like an eye, not so much more, not any searching, no compliments.

Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing. Please beef, please be carved clear, please be a case of consideration.

Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.

A satin sight, what is a trick, no trick is mountainous and the color, all the rush is in the blood.

Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.

Please spice, please no name, place a whole weight, sink into a standard rising, raise a circle, choose a right around, make the resonance accounted and gather green any collar.

To bury a slender chicken, to raise an old feather, to surround a garland and to bake a pole splinter, to suggest a repose and to settle simply, to surrender one another, to succeed saving simpler, to satisfy a singularity and not to be blinder, to sugar nothing darker and to read redder, to have the color better, to sort out dinner, to remain together, to surprise no sinner, to curve nothing sweeter, to continue thinner, to increase in resting recreation to design string not dimmer.

Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.

The sooner there is jerking, the sooner freshness is tender, the sooner the round it is not round the sooner it is withdrawn in cutting, the sooner the measure means service, the sooner there is chinking, the sooner there is sadder than salad, the sooner there is none do her, the sooner there is no choice, the sooner there is a gloom freer, the same sooner and more sooner, this is no error in hurry and in pressure and in opposition to consideration.

A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.

A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.

Pride, when is there perfect pretence, there is no more than yesterday and ordinary.

A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound.

There is coagulation in cold and there is none in prudence. Something is preserved and the evening is long and the colder spring has sudden shadows in a sun. All the stain is tender and lilacs really lilacs are disturbed. Why is the perfect reëstablishment practiced and prized, why is it composed. The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur. This is a result. There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no delight and no mathematics

[elisabettacormac]

B. S. Johnson: On Supply

B. S. Johnson

On Supply

WELL, I mean, anything was better than schooldinners with the crummy staff at this one.

“Oh,” she halflaughed, afterwards, each time, “a teacher, too!”

They think you’re not human if you’re a teacher, like as if you were a copper, only without the power. In the same class as coppers, that is, to be avoided if you’re not looking for bother.

Not that she wanted to avoid me once I’d been round there. She was the nearest to a nympho I’ve come—I mean, I wasn’t the only one; I’m sure she had it from the milkman in the mornings, and the paraffinman in the afternoons, as regulars, to say nothing of taking it off metermen (gas and electric) and fortuitous itinerate brush salesmen and carpetfloggers, as occasionals. I was just for a couple of weeks her dinnertime special.

It was during the dinner break that I first went round there, so’s the daughter wouldn’t be there. This was this enlightened Head’s way of enlightening his teachers.

“Go and see for yourself what sort of home conditions she lives in!” he said to me, when I’d brought this girl to him for the second time in a week for foulmouthed trouble-making. And while I’m not convinced that this approach is of much real use (all right, so the child has no love or security at home, and you are sorry for her, and sympathise with her: but how does this help you to prevent her from wrecking your lessons?), I thought it might be interesting.

Why she didn’t have her daughter home for dinner I don’t know, for she did a good nosh. Or, rather, I did get to know after the first couple of days.

“D’you want it before or after?” she’ say, meaning nosh.

Or

“D’you want it before or after?” I’d say, meaning the other.

Every time I think it was something frozen: fish fingers, or steakburgers usually, occasionally beef slices in gravy, with frozen peas. And she did the best chips I’ve ever tasted. Perhaps they came out of the cold cabinet at the supermarket, too, but I certainly can’t hold it against them. And the food was never so hot that it burned my tongue: she worked hard at her timing.

I supposed I must just have missed the Head several times before my last day. He used to walk back (from the restaurant where we had lunch) down her street, and while I’m pretty sure he didn’t see me come up the steps from her airy, he turned the corner immediately afterwards and must have suspected where I’d been.

That’s the advantage of supply: you can leave a school at a moment’s notice without explanation. The disadvantage of course, is that they can dispense with you similarly. Anyway, I thought it better not to go back, and reported to the office for another school next day.

But, well, like I said, anything was better than schooldinners with the staff at that one.

[elisabettacormac]

Rosamond Lehmann: Try to Be Nice to the Little Wainwrights.

Rosamond Lehmann

Try to be Nice to the Little Wainwrights

There as usual were the sweep’s children, or about five of the eight, hanging in a watchful breathlessly still cluster on the railings, their noses running, their dirty faces squashed against the spikes.

‘Hullo!’

‘Allow!’ A brief bronchial whisper, in unison.

‘Been to school to-day?’

‘Yaas.’

‘How’s the baby?’

Pause—

‘The owld biby?’

‘Well—yes.’ It certainly did seem a very old baby, pinched, bald, blue, tottering. All the same, what a queer… Perhaps as a term of endearment, like old chap.

‘’E’s bad.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Got a cowld.’

‘Oh dear. And have you got cold too?’

‘Yaas.’

‘All of you?’

‘Yaas.’

‘You’ve always got colds, haven’t you?’

‘Yaas.’

Pause. Their collective face was tense with more to come. They spoke.

‘We got aa new biby.’

‘A new… Oh! Have you really?’

‘Yaas. Come las’ night.’

‘How nice.’

‘Yaas. Muvver says if they send ‘her any more she’ll frow ‘em awiy.’

Intensely serious there were, hoarse, wary; forlorn as a group strayed from another world and clinging defensively together. Their eyes were sharp, bright, hard, rats’ eyes above high sharp cheekbones, their lips long, thin and flat, their skulls narrow and curious knobbed. They didn’t look like other people’s children. They had hardly any hair; and undersized frames with square high shoulders, almost like hunchbacks, and frail legs; and they were enclosed in large trailing ragged coats, swathes of trouser, strange adult boots that clapped and flapped as they ran. Regularly once a year he new baby became the old baby. There seemed no warning, but there it was—another weevil, blanched, shrivelled, perfectly silent, carried forth from the cottage triumphantly among them for an airing, as ants convey an egg. Each year you didn’t think they’d rear it, but they did. Tough as stonecrop it pushed up, and joined the others on the railings. They were the worst family in the neighbourhood. Their cottage was unwashed, unswept, verminous, littered with broken glass, broken china, odds and ends of soap-box and bedding: a dreadful problem Mrs. Curtis sighed heavily, washed her hands in Lysol coming back from visiting Mrs. Wainwright with old clothes and good advice; looked pained, discussing each new arrival in lowered tones with the district nurse. Could nothing be done? Nothing could be done. The Wainwrights had a lot of family feeling. Though haggard, sagging, crooked, with chaotic teeth and hair, Mrs. Wainwright was by no means daunted or depressed, and frequently was heard to declare she wouldn’t be without one of them. often of an afternoon, when not actually on the throes of childbirth, she abandoned her unprofitable household cares, put on a spirited hat with feathers, and took them all for a walk. Merrily the squeaking pram trundled, brimming with children. It was a very high, small, spidery pram, a unique design: very likely the First Pram. The older children swarmed around it. they went at a brisk pace up the road to the woods. When they came back towards dark the pram was heavier. The little ones lay softer. Sometimes it was hen feathers, sometimes rabbit fur… Mrs. Wainwright was said to be a gypsy.

Finding nothing more to say, Olivia passed on. At once they abandoned their group formation and ran to the corner of the fence. She felt their eyes like gimlets in her back. When she had gone a little way, they started to call after her.

‘Livee-yer! Livee-yer!’

Very soon a hoarse chant arose:

‘Livee Curtis is her mime

Single is her situation,

‘Appee is the luckee man

Who mikes the alteration.’

And cackles, rude hoots and howls pursued her until she was out of sight.

Really, it didn’t do to try to be nice to the little Wainwrights.

[elisabettacormac]

Ian Rankin

No Sanity Clause

It was all Edgar Allan Poe’s fault. Either that or the Scottish Parliament. Joey Briggs was spending most of his days in the run-up to Christmas sheltering from Edinburgh’s biting December winds. He’d been walking up George IV Bridge one day and had watched a down-and-out slouching into the Central Library. Joey had hesitated. He wasn’t a down-and-out, not yet anyway. Maybe he would be soon, if Scully Aitchison MSP got his way, but for now Joey had a bedsit and a trickle of state cash. Thing was, nothing made you miss money more than Christmas. The shop windows displayed their magnetic pull. There were queues at the cash machines. Kids tugged on their parents’ sleeves, ready with something new to add to the present list. Boyfriends were out buying gold, while families piled the food trolley high.

And then there was Joey, nine weeks out of prison and nobody to call his friend. He knew there was nothing waiting for him back in his home town. His wife had taken the children and tiptoed out of his life. Joey’s sister had written to him in prison with the news. So, eleven months on, Joey had walked through the gates of Saughton Jail and taken the first bus into the city centre, purchased an evening paper and started the hunt for somewhere to live.

The bedsit was fine. It was one of four in a tenement basement just off South Clerk Street, sharing a kitchen and bathroom. The other men worked, didn’t say much. Joey’s room had a gas fire with a coin-meter beside it, too expensive to keep it going all day. He’d tried sitting in the kitchen with the stove lit, until the landlord had caught him. Then he’d tried steeping in the bath, topping up the hot. But the water always seemed to run cold after half a tub.

‘You could try getting a job,’ the landlord had said.

Not so easy with a prison record. Most of the jobs were for security and nightwatch. Joey didn’t think he’d get very far there.

Following the tramp into the library was one of his better ideas. The uniform behind the desk gave him a look, but didn’t say anything. Joey wandered the stacks, picked out a book and sat himself down. And that was that. He became a regular, the staff acknowledged him with a nod and sometimes even a smile. He kept himself presentable, didn’t fall asleep the way some of the old guys did. He read for much of the day, alternating between fiction, biographies and textbooks. He read up on local history, plumbing and Winston Churchill, Nigel Tranter’s novels and National Trust gardens. He knew the library would close over Christmas, didn’t know what he’d do without it. He never borrowed books, because he was afraid they’d have him on some blacklist: convicted housebreaker and petty thief, not to be trusted with loan material.

He dreamt of spending Christmas in one of the town’s posh hotels, looking out across Princes Street Gardens to the Castle. He’d order room service and watch TV. He’d take as many baths as he liked. They’d clean his clothes for him and return them to the room. He dreamt of the presents he’d buy himself: a big radio with a CD player, some new shirts and pairs of shoes; and books. Plenty of books.

The dream became almost real to him, so that he found himself nodding off in the library, coming to as his head hit the page he’d been reading. Then he’d have to concentrate, only to find himself drifting into a warm sleep again.

Until he met Edgar Allan Poe.

It was a book of poems and short stories, among them ‘The Purloined Letter’. Joey loved that, thought it was really clever the way you could hide something by putting it right in front of people. Something that didn’t look out of place, people would just ignore it. There’d been a guy in Saughton, doing time for fraud. He’d told Joey: ‘Three things: a suit, a haircut and an expensive watch. If you’ve got those, it’s amazing what you can get away with.’ He’d meant that clients had trusted him, because they’d seen something they were comfortable with, something they expected to see. What they hadn’t seen was what was right in front of their noses, to wit: a shark, someone who was going to take a big bite out of their savings.

As Joey’s eyes flitted back over Poe’s story, he started to get an idea. He started to get what he thought was a very good idea indeed. Problem was, he needed what the fraudster had called ‘the start-up’, meaning some cash. He happened to look across to where one of the old tramps was slumped on a chair, the newspaper in front of him unopened. Joey looked around: nobody was watching. The place was dead: who had time to go to the library when Christmas was around the corner? Joey walked over to the old guy, slipped a hand into his coat pocket. Felt coins and notes, bunched his fingers around them. He glanced down at the newspaper. There was a story about Scully Aitchison’s campaign. Aitchison was the MSP who wanted all offenders put on a central register, open to public inspection. He said law-abiding folk had the right to know if their neighbour was a thief or a murderer – as if stealing was the same as killing somebody! There was a small photo of Aitchison, too, beaming that self-satisfied smile, his glasses glinting. If Aitchison got his way, Joey would never get out of the rut.

Not unless his plan paid off.

*****

John Rebus saw his girlfriend kissing Santa Claus. There was a German Market in Princes Street Gardens. That was where Rebus was to meet Jean. He hadn’t expected to find her in a clinch with a man dressed in a red suit, black boots and snowy-white beard. Santa broke away and moved off, just as Rebus was approaching. German folk songs were blaring out. There was a startled look on Jean’s face.

‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ She was watching the retreating figure. ‘I think maybe he’s just had too much festive spirit. He came up and grabbed me.’ Rebus made to follow, but Jean stopped him. ‘Come on, John. Season of goodwill and all that.’

‘It’s assault, Jean.’

She laughed, regaining her composure. ‘You’re going to take St Nicholas down the station and put him in the cells?’ She rubbed his arm. ‘Let’s forget it, eh? The fun starts in ten minutes.’

Rebus wasn’t too sure that the evening was going to be ‘fun’. He spent every day bogged down in crimes and tragedies. He wasn’t sure that a ‘mystery dinner’ was going to offer much relief. It had been Jean’s idea. There was a hotel just across the road. You all went in for dinner, were handed envelopes telling you which character you’d be playing. A body was discovered, and then you all turned detective.

‘It’ll be fun,’ Jean insisted, leading him out of the gardens. She had three shopping bags with her. He wondered if any of them were for him. She’d asked for a list of his Christmas wants, but so far all he’d come up with were a couple of CDs by String Driven Thing.

As they entered the hotel, they saw that the mystery evening was being held on the mezzanine floor. Most of the guests had already gathered and were enjoying glasses of cava. Rebus asked in vain for a beer.

‘Cava’s included in the price,’ the waitress told him. A man dressed in Victorian costume was checking names and handing out carrier bags.

‘Inside,’ he told Jean and Rebus, ‘you’ll find instructions, a secret clue that only you know, your name, and an item of clothing.’

‘Oh,’ Jean said, ‘I’m Little Nell.’ She fixed a bonnet to her head. ‘Who are you, John?’

‘Mr Bumble.’ Rebus produced his name-tag and a yellow woollen scarf, which Jean insisted on tying around his neck.

‘It’s a Dickensian theme, specially for Christmas,’ the host revealed, before moving off to confront his other victims. Everyone looked a bit embarrassed, but most were trying for enthusiasm. Rebus didn’t doubt that a couple of glasses of wine over dinner would loosen a few Edinburgh stays. There were a couple of faces he recognised. One was a journalist, her arm around her boyfriend’s waist. The other was a man who appeared to be with his wife. He had one of those looks to him, the kind that says you should know him. She was blonde and petite and about a decade younger than her husband.

‘Isn’t that an MSP?’ Jean whispered.

‘His name’s Scully Aitchison,’ Rebus told her.

Jean was reading her information sheet. ‘The victim tonight is a certain Ebenezer Scrooge,’ she said.

‘And did you kill him?’

She thumped his arm. Rebus smiled, but his eyes were on the MSP. Aitchison’s face was bright red. Rebus guessed he’d been drinking since lunchtime. His voice boomed across the floor, broadcasting the news that he and Catriona had booked a room for the night, so they wouldn’t have to drive back to the constituency.

They were all mingling on the mezzanine landing. The room where they’d dine was just off to the right, its doors still closed. Guests were starting to ask each other which characters they were playing. As one elderly lady – Miss Havisham on her name-tag – came over to ask Jean about Little Nell, Rebus saw a red-suited man appear at the top of the stairs. Santa carried what looked like a half-empty sack. He started making his way across the floor, but was stopped by Aitchison.

‘J’accuse!’ the MSP bawled. ‘You killed Scrooge because of his inhumanity to his fellow man!’ Aitchison’s wife came to the rescue, dragging her husband away, but Santa’s eyes seemed to follow them. As he made to pass Rebus, Rebus fixed him with a stare.

‘Jean,’ he asked, ‘is he the same one …?’

She only caught the back of Santa’s head. ‘They all look alike to me,’ she said.

Santa was on his way to the next flight of stairs. Rebus watched him leave, then turned back to the other guests, all of them now tricked out in odd items of clothing. No wonder Santa had looked like he’d stumbled into an asylum. Rebus was reminded of a Marx Brothers line, Groucho trying to get Chico’s name on a contract, telling him to sign the sanity clause.

But, as Chico said, everyone knew there was no such thing as Sanity Clause.

*****

Joey jimmied open his third room of the night. The Santa suit worked a treat. Okay, so it was hot and uncomfortable, and the beard was itching his neck, but it worked! He’d breezed through reception and up the stairs. So far, as he’d worked the corridors all he’d had were a few jokey comments. No one from security asking him who he was. No guests becoming suspicious. He fitted right in, and he was right under their noses.

God bless Edgar Allan Poe.

The woman in the fancy dress shop had even thrown in a sack, saying he’d be wanting to fill it. How true: in the first bedroom, he’d dumped out the crumpled sheets of old newspaper and started filling the sack – clothes, jewellery, the contents of the mini-bar. Same with the second room: a tap on the door to make sure no one was home, then the chisel into the lock and hey presto. Thing was, there wasn’t much in the rooms. A notice in the wardrobe told clients to lock all valuables in the hotel safe at reception. Still, he had a few nice things: camera, credit cards, bracelet and necklace. Sweat was running into his eyes, but he couldn’t afford to shed his disguise. He was starting to have crazy thoughts: take a good long soak; ring down for room service; find a room that hadn’t been taken and settle in for the duration. In the third room, he sat on the bed, feeling dizzy. There was a briefcase open beside him, just lots of paperwork. His stomach growled, and he remembered that his last meal had been a Mars Bar supper the previous day. He broke open a jar of salted peanuts, switched the TV on while he ate. As he put the empty jar down, he happened to glance at the contents of the briefcase. ‘Parliamentary briefing… Law and Justice Sub-Committee…’ He saw a list of names on the top sheet. One of them was coloured with a yellow marker.

Scully Aitchison.

The drunk man downstairs… That was where Joey knew him from! He leapt to his feet, trying to think. He could stay here and give the MSP a good hiding. He could… He picked up the room-service menu, called down and ordered smoked salmon, a steak, a bottle each of best red wine and malt whisky. Then heard himself saying those sweetest words: ‘Put it on my room, will you?’

Then he settled back to wait. Flipped through the paperwork again. An envelope slipped out. Card inside, and a letter inside the card.

Dear Scully, it began. I hope it isn’t all my fault, this idea of yours for a register of offenders …

*****

‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Rebus.

Nor did he. Dinner was over, the actor playing Scrooge was flat out on the mezzanine floor, and Rebus was as far away from solving the crime as ever. Thankfully, a bar had been opened up, and he spent most of his time perched on a high stool, pretending to read the background notes while taking sips of beer. Jean had hooked up with Miss Havisham, while Aitchison’s wife was slumped in one of the armchairs, drawing on a cigarette. The MSP himself was playing ringmaster, and had twice confronted Rebus, calling for him to reveal himself as the villain.

‘Innocent, m’lud,’ was all Rebus had said.

‘We think it’s Magwitch,’ Jean said, suddenly breathless by Rebus’s side, her bonnet at a jaunty angle. ‘He and Scrooge knew one another in prison.’

‘I didn’t know Scrooge served time,’ Rebus said.

‘That’s because you’re not asking questions.’

‘I don’t need to; I’ve got you to tell me. That’s what makes a good detective.’

He watched her march away. Four of the diners had encircled the poor man playing Magwitch. Rebus had harboured suspicions, too… but now he was thinking of jail time, and how it affected those serving it. It gave them a certain look, a look they brought back into the world on their release. The same look he’d seen in Santa’s eyes.

And here was Santa now, coming back down the stairs, his sack slung over one shoulder. Crossing the mezzanine floor as if seeking someone out. Then finding them: Scully Aitchison. Rebus rose from his stool and wandered over.

‘Have you been good this year?’ Santa was asking Aitchison.

‘No worse than anyone else,’ the MSP smirked.

‘Sure about that?’ Santa’s eyes narrowed.

‘I wouldn’t lie to Father Christmas.’

‘What about this plan of yours, the offender register?’

Aitchison blinked a couple of times.

‘What about it?’ Santa held a piece of paper aloft, his voice rising. ‘Your own nephew’s serving time for fraud. Managed to keep that quiet, haven’t you?’

Aitchison stared at the letter. ‘Where in hell…? How…?’

The journalist stepped forward. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

Santa handed over the letter, then pulled off his hat and beard. Started heading for the stairs down. Rebus blocked his way.

‘Time to hand out the presents,’ he said quietly. Joey looked at him and understood immediately, slid the sack from his shoulder. Rebus took it. ‘Now on you go.’

‘You’re not arresting me?’

‘Who’d feed Dancer and Prancer?’ Rebus asked.

His stomach full of steak and wine, a bottle of malt in the capacious pocket of his costume, Joey smiled his way back towards the outside world.

[elisabettacormac]

Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street

Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the gloves herself.

Big Ben was striking as she stepped out into the street. It was eleven o'clock and the unused hour was fresh as if issued to children on a beach. But there was something solemn in the deliberate swing of the repeated strokes; something stirring in the murmur of wheels and the shuffle of footsteps.

No doubt they were not all bound on errands of happiness. There is much more to be said about us than that we walk the streets of Westminster. Big Ben too is nothing but steel rods consumed by rust were it not for the care of H.M.'s Office of Works. Only for Mrs Dalloway the moment was complete; for Mrs Dalloway June was fresh. A happy childhood--and it was not to his daughters only that Justin Parry had seemed a fine fellow (weak of course on the Bench); flowers at evening, smoke rising; the caw of rooks falling from ever so high, down down through the October air - there is nothing to take the place of childhood. A leaf of mint brings it back: or a cup with a blue ring.

Poor little wretches, she sighed, and pressed forward. Oh, right under the horses' noses, you little demon! and there she was left on the kerb stretching her hand out, while Jimmy Dawes grinned on the further side.

A charming woman, poised, eager, strangely white-haired for her pink cheeks, so Scope Purvis, C.C.B., saw her as he hurried to his office. She stiffened a little, waiting for burthen's van to pass. Big Ben struck the tenth; struck the eleventh stroke. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Pride held her erect, inheriting, handing on, acquainted with discipline and with suffering. How people suffered, how they suffered, she thought, thinking of Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night decked with jewels, eating her heart out, because that nice boy was dead, and now the old Manor House (Durtnall's van passed) must go to a cousin.

'Good morning to you!' said Hugh Whitbread raising his hat rather extravagantly by the china shop, for they had known each other as children. 'Where are you off to?'

'I love walking in London,' said Mrs Dalloway. 'Really it's better than walking in the country!'

'We've just come up,' said Hugh Whitbread. 'Unfortunately to see doctors.'

'Milly?' said Mrs Dalloway, instantly compassionate.

'Out of sorts,' said Hugh Whitbread. 'That sort of thing. Dick all right?'

'First rate!' said Clarissa.

Of course, she thought, walking on, Milly is about my age--fifty, fifty-two. So it is probably that, Hugh's manner had said so, said it perfectly--dear old Hugh, thought Mrs Dalloway, remembering with amusement, with gratitude, with emotion, how shy, like a brother--one would rather die than speak to one's brother--Hugh had always been, when he was at Oxford, and came over, and perhaps one of them (drat the thing!) couldn't ride. How then could women sit in Parliament? How could they do things with men? For there is this extra-ordinarily deep instinct, something inside one; you can't get over it; it's no use trying; and men like Hugh respect it without our saying it, which is what one loves, thought Clarissa, in dear old Hugh.

She had passed through the Admiralty Arch and saw at the end of the empty road with its thin trees Victoria's white mound, Victoria's billowing motherliness, amplitude and homeliness, always ridiculous, yet how sublime, thought Mrs Dalloway, remembering Kensington Gardens and the old lady in horn spectacles and being told by Nanny to stop dead still and bow to the Queen. The flag flew above the Palace. The King and Queen were back then. Dick had met her at lunch the other day--a thoroughly nice woman. It matters so much to the poor, thought Clarissa, and to the soldiers. A man in bronze stood heroically on a pedestal with a gun on her left hand side--the South African war. It matters, thought Mrs Dalloway walking towards Buckingham Palace. There it stood four-square, in the broad sunshine, uncompromising, plain. But it was character, she thought; something inborn in the race; what Indians respected. The Queen went to hospitals, opened bazaars--the Queen of England, thought Clarissa, looking at the Palace. Already at this hour a motor car passed out at the gates; soldiers saluted; the gates were shut. And Clarissa, crossing the road, entered the Park, holding herself upright.

June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Westminster with mottled breasts gave suck to their young. Quite respectable girls lay stretched on the grass. An elderly man, stooping very stiffly, picked up a crumpled paper, spread it out flat and flung it away. How horrible! Last night at the Embassy Sir Dighton had said, 'If 1 want a fellow to hold my horse, I have only to put up my hand.' But the religious question is far more serious than the economic, Sir Dighton had said, which she thought extraordinarily interesting, from a man like Sir Dighton. 'Oh, the country will never know what it has lost,' he had said, talking of his own accord, about dear Jack Stewart.

She mounted the little hill lightly. The air stirred with energy. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Piccadilly and Arlington Street and the Mall seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, upon waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To ride; to dance; she had adored all that. Or going long walks in the country, talking, about books, what to do with one's life, for young people were amazingly priggish--oh, the things one had said! But one had conviction. Middle age is the devil. People like Jack'll never know that, she thought; for he never once thought of death, never, they said, knew he was dying. And now can never mourn--how did it go?--a head grown grey . . . From the contagion of the world's slow stain, . . . have drunk their cup a round or two before. . . . From the contagion of the world's slow stain! She held herself upright.

But how jack would have shouted! Quoting Shelley, in Piccadilly, 'You want a pin,' he would have said. He hated frumps. 'My God Clarissa! My God Clarissa!'--she could hear him now at the Devonshire House party, about poor Sylvia Hunt in her amber necklace and that dowdy old silk. Clarissa held herself upright for she had spoken aloud and now she was in Piccadilly, passing the house with the slender green columns, and the balconies; passing club windows full of newspapers; passing old Lady Burdett-Coutts' house where the glazed white parrot used to hang; and Devonshire House, without its gilt leopards; and Claridge's, where she must remember Dick wanted her to leave a card on Mrs Jepson or she would be gone. Rich Americans can be very charming. There was St James's Palace; like a child's game with bricks; and now--she had passed Bond Street--she was by Hatchard's book shop. The stream was endless--endless endless. Lords, Ascot, Hurlingham--what was it? What a duck, she thought, looking at the frontispiece of some book of memoirs spread wide in the bow window, Sir Joshua perhaps or Romney; arch, bright, demure; the sort of girl--like her own Elizabeth--the only real sort of girl. And there was that absurd book, Soapy Sponge, which Jim used to quote by the yard; and Shakespeare's Sonnets. She knew them by heart. Phil and she had argued all day about the Dark Lady, and Dick had said straight out at dinner that night that he had never heard of her. Really, she had married him for that! He had never read Shakespeare! There must be some little cheap book she could buy for Milly--Cranford of course! Was there ever anything so enchanting as the cow in petticoats? If only people had that sort of humour, that sort of self-respect now, thought Clarissa, for she remembered the broad pages; the sentences ending; the characters--how one talked about them as if they were real. For all the great things one must go to the past, she thought. From the contagion of the world's slow stain . . . Fear no more the heat o' the sun. . . . And now can never mourn, can never mourn, she repeated, her eyes straying over the window; for it ran in her head; the test of great poetry; the moderns had never written anything one wanted to read about death, she thought; and turned.

Omnibuses joined motor cars; motor cars vans; vans taxicabs, taxicabs motor cars--here was an open motor car with a girl, alone. Up till four, her feet tingling, I know, thought Clarissa, for the girl looked washed out, half asleep, in the corner of the car after the dance. And another car came; and another. No! No! No! Clarissa smiled good-naturedly. The fat lady had taken every sort of trouble, but diamonds! orchids! at this hour of the morning! No! No! No! The excellent policeman would, when the time came, hold up his hand. Another motor car passed. How utterly unattractive! Why should a girl of that age paint black round her eyes? And a young man, with a girl, at this hour, when the country-- The admirable policeman raised his hand and Clarissa acknowledging his sway, taking her time, crossed, walked towards Bond Street; saw the narrow crooked street, the yellow banners; the thick notched telegraph wires stretched across the sky.

A hundred years ago her great-great-grandfather, Seymour Parry, who ran away with Conway's daughter, had walked down Bond Street. Down Bond Street the Parrys had walked for a hundred years, and might have met the Dalloways (Leighs on the mother's side) going up. Her father got his clothes from Hill's. There was a roll of cloth in the window, and here just one jar on a black table, incredibly expensive; like the thick pink salmon on the ice block at the fish monger's. The jewels were exquisite--pink and orange stars, paste, Spanish, she thought, and chains of old gold; starry buckles, little brooches which had been worn on sea-green satin by ladies with high head-dresses. But no good looking! One must economise. She must go on past the picture dealer's where one of the odd French pictures hung, as if people had thrown confetti--pink and blue--for a joke. If you had lived with pictures (and it's the same with books and music) thought Clarissa, passing the Aeolian Hall, you can't be taken in by a joke.

The river of Bond Street was clogged. There, like a Queen at a tournament, raised, regal, was Lady Bexborough. She sat in her carriage, upright, alone, looking through her glasses. The white glove was loose at her wrist. She was in black, quite shabby, yet, thought Clarissa, how extraordinarily it tells, breeding, self-respect, never saying a word too much or letting people gossip; an astonishing friend; no one can pick a hole in her after all these years, and now, there she is, thought Clarissa, passing the Countess who waited powdered, perfectly still, and Clarissa would have given anything to be like that, the mistress of Clarefield, talking politics, like a man. But she never goes anywhere, thought Clarissa, and it's quite useless to ask her, and the carriage went on and Lady Bexborough was borne past like a Queen at a tournament, though she had nothing to live for and the old man is failing and they say she is sick of it all, thought Clarissa and the tears actually rose to her eyes as she entered the shop.

'Good morning,' said Clarissa in her charming voice. 'Gloves,' she said with her exquisite friendliness and putting her bag on the counter began, very slowly, to undo the buttons. 'White gloves,' she said. 'Above the elbow,' and she looked straight into the shop-woman's face--but this was not the girl she remembered? She looked quite old. 'These really don't fit,' said Clarissa. The shop-girl looked at them. 'Madame wears bracelets?' Clarissa spread out her fingers. 'Perhaps it's my rings.' And the girl took the grey gloves with her to the end of the counter.

Yes, thought Clarissa, if it's the girl I remember, she's twenty years older. . .. There was only one other customer, sitting sideways at the counter, her elbow poised, her bare hand drooping, vacant; like a figure on a Japanese fan, thought Clarissa, too vacant perhaps, yet some men would adore her. The lady shook her head sadly. Again the gloves were too large. She turned round the glass. 'Above the wrist,' she reproached the grey-headed woman; who looked and agreed.

They waited; a clock ticked; Bond Street hummed, dulled, distant; the woman went away holding gloves. 'Above the wrist,' said the lady, mournfully, raising her voice. And she would have to order chairs, ices, flowers, and cloak-room tickets, thought Clarissa. The people she didn't want would come; the others wouldn't. She would stand by the door. They sold stockings--silk stockings. A lady is known by her gloves and her shoes, old Uncle William used to say. And through the hanging silk stockings quivering silver she looked at the lady, sloping shouldered, her hand drooping, her bag slipping, her eyes vacantly on the floor. It would be intolerable if dowdy women came to her party! Would one have liked Keats if he had worn red socks? Oh, at last--she drew into the counter and it flashed into her mind:

'Do you remember before the war you had gloves with pearl buttons?'

'French gloves, Madame?'

'Yes, they were French,' said Clarissa. The other lady rose very sadly and took her bag, and looked at the gloves on the counter. But they were all too large--always too large at the wrist.

'With pearl buttons,' said the shop-girl, who looked ever so much older. She split the lengths of tissue paper apart on the counter. With pearl buttons, thought Clarissa, perfectly simple--how French!

'Madame's hands are so slender,' said the shop-girl, drawing the glove firmly, smoothly, down over her rings. And Clarissa looked at her arm in the looking-glass. The glove hardly came to the elbow. Were there others half an inch longer? Still it seemed tiresome to bother her perhaps the one day in the month, thought Clarissa, when it's an agony to stand. 'Oh, don't bother,' she said. But the gloves were brought.

'Don't you get fearfully tired,' she said in her charming voice, 'standing? When d'you get your holiday?'

'In September, Madame, when we're not so busy.'

When we're in the country thought Clarissa. Or shooting. She has a fortnight at Brighton. In some stuffy lodging. The landlady takes the sugar. Nothing would be easier than to send her to Mrs Lumley's right in the country (and it was on the tip of her tongue). But then she remembered how on their honeymoon Dick had shown her the folly of giving impulsively. It was much more important, he said, to get trade with China. Of course he was right. And she could feel the girl wouldn't like to be given things. There she was in her place. So was Dick. Selling gloves was her job. She had her own sorrows quite separate, 'and now can never mourn, can never mourn,' the words ran in her head. 'From the contagion of the world's slow stain,' thought Clarissa holding her arm stiff, for there are moments when it seems utterly futile (the glove was drawn off leaving her arm flecked with powder)--simply one doesn't believe, thought Clarissa, any more in God.

The traffic suddenly roared; the silk stockings brightened. A customer came in.

'White gloves,' she said, with some ring in her voice that Clarissa remembered.

It used, thought Clarissa, to be so simple. Down down through the air came the caw of the rooks. When Sylvia died, hundreds of years ago, the yew hedges looked so lovely with the diamond webs in the mist before early church. But if Dick were to die tomorrow, as for believing in God--no, she would let the children choose, but for herself, like Lady Bexborough, who opened the bazaar, they say, with the telegram in her hand--Roden, her favourite, killed--she would go on. But why, if one doesn't believe? For the sake of others, she thought, taking the glove in her hand. The girl would be much more unhappy if she didn't believe.

'Thirty shillings,' said the shop-woman. 'No, pardon me Madame, thirty-five. The French gloves are more.'

For one doesn't live for oneself, thought Clarissa.

And then the other customer took a glove, tugged it, and it split.

'There!' she exclaimed .

'A fault of the skin,' said the grey-headed woman hurriedly. 'Sometimes a drop of acid in tanning. Try this pair, Madame.'

'But it's an awful swindle to ask two pound ten!'

Clarissa looked at the lady; the lady looked at Clarissa.

'Gloves have never been quite so reliable since the war,' said the shop-girl, apologising, to Clarissa.

But where had she seen the other lady?--elderly, with a frill under her chin; wearing a black ribbon for gold eyeglasses; sensual, clever, like a Sargent drawing. How one can tell from a voice when people are in the habit, thought Clarissa, of making other people--'It's a shade too tight,' she said--obey. The shop-woman went off again. Clarissa was left waiting. Fear no more she repeated, playing her finger on the counter. Fear no more the heat o' the sun. Fear no more she repeated. There were little brown spots on her arm. And the girl crawled like a snail. Thou thy worldly task hast done. Thousands of young men had died that things might go on. At last! Half an rich above the elbow; pearl buttons; five and a quarter. My dear slow coach, thought Clarissa, do you think I can sit here the whole morning? Now you'll take twenty-five minutes to bring me my change!

There was a violent explosion in the street outside. The shop-women cowered behind the counters. But Clarissa, sitting very upright, smiled at the other lady. 'Miss Anstruther!' she exclaimed.

[elisabettacormac]

Buthaina Al-Nasiri: Circus Dog

Buthaina Al-Nasiri

Circus Dog It was an autumn morning and I was sitting in front of the big tent watching the way the leaves were falling onto the street and being bast along by gusts of wind to the end of the turning. It was then that I s\aw this beggar coming from somewhere with a puppy under his arm. He stood in front of the doorway and began to read the advertisement stuck on the outer wall. All of a sudden I found him coming inside and approaching me. Before I could tell him that we wouldn't be opening for a week, he broke in to say, "I'd like to see the circus manager." I looked at him for a while: he had a small, pleasant face, one of those that doesn't indicate its owner's age. His hair was curly and red, his eyes small and sunken, and a graying stubble covered his prominent cheekbones. He was wearing a leather jacket and black trousers that were half steeped in dust, as though he had just emerged from the desert. "Why?" I asked him. "I want to show him some tricks my dog does." I lowered my gaze to under his arm. The dog was small and varicolored; it too was covered in dust and its eyes were festering. In its gaze there was a certain strange apathy "What can your dog do?" Patting the animal's head, he said, "It can do sums: adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing." I shrugged my shoulders and indicated to him that he should follow me. After all, you can never tell with dogs. "Fine," said the manager. "Let's see what it can do." Holding the dog behind him, the man exclaimed: "Not now! I implore of you--we're almost dropping from fatigue and hunger. We've covered several miles and haven't eaten since yesterday." After food had been brought and the two of them had wiped their plates clean, the dog settled itself down by the man's feet, while he asked for a cigarette. Blowing out the smoke, he began relating odd bits of his life history. With a clearly intended movement, the manager looked at his watch and said, "And now? Are we going to see something?" "Oh yes, of course!" the man exclaimed. "We're ready, aren't we?" And he stroked the head of the dog, which was hiding behind him. Rubbing at its eyelid with its paw, the dog gave a yawn. "I need some small bits of paper we can write numbers on. From one to ten only—it doesn't know more than that." I cup up the paper and wrote down the numbers, while the man gave me a sideways look, occasionally taking the pieces from me to glance at and saying to me: "No, no, I want them a bit clearer" —and he'd go back to crossing his legs and following my hand. Then, suddenly, he'd lean across and point: "Darken the number here." When I'd finished, he took up the papers and turned to the manager proudly: "Choose any two numbers and it'll add them up for you." For the very first time I saw our manager at a loss for words, so I quickly said: "Four and two." The man leaned over the floor and placed the two numbers with the sign for addition between them, then put the other bits of paper to one side. he stood up, looking around him in case he'd forgotten something. He went up to where his dog was crouched. Giving it a kick, he led it up to the bits of paper. One after the other it began sniffing at them eagerly, then rubbed its nose against the ground and raised its eyes to its master, wagging its tail. The man tried in vain to draw its attention to the numbers, but it had stretched itself out, with its head on its paws, and had gone to sleep. The man smiled apologetically. "it's tired. If you only knew how many miles we've covered on foot! But a little cold water will restore its energy." I took him and his dog to the elephant trainer, who was hosing them down with water. When I had told him what it was about, he directed the hose to the dog. The animal, taken by surprise, was seized with terror. It sprang away, its body quivering. It went off at a run, entering one tent and leaving another until we managed to catch it, when it went on whining. It trembled violently until its owner took hold of it, when it buried its head under his arms and calmed

down. We returned to the manager's office. After the man had patted the dog on the head several times, he put it on the ground on top of the numbers. I could see that the dog was still in a state of terror. Its legs could scarcely bear its weight and its tail was clinging to its stomach, while its head was lowered in expectation of water being poured down on top of him. Suddenly the manager became restless, his patience at an end. The dog's trembling increased to such an extent that its belly was almost touching the floor. The bits of paper were drenched with the urine that flowed all around the dog. Trying to hide his embarrassment with a short laugh, the man said, "It's not used to such a large audience." The manager motioned toward the door: "Take the dog and get out -- we know the tricks of the liked of you." Open-mouthed, the man looked at us in disbelief. Then he silently bent over the dog and hugged it to his chest. Some urine fell from its tail onto his coat and I heard him give a sigh. I raised my eyes and saw that he man was crying silently. He was trying to cover his face with his sleeve. Overcome with tears, he stretched out on the ground, with the dog in his arms, and began sobbing loudly. While the manager was patting him on the shoulder consolingly, the man, in a voice interrupted by weeping and moaning, started to relate to us how he had found the dog as a tiny puppy. It had fallen into a hole full of water, from where he had lifted it, dried it, and brought it up. He told how he had stolen and lived the life of a tramp for its sake, hoping to teach it some tricks from which he could later earn his living. The dog, however, had repaid his good turn with unparalleled rejection and ingratitude, for it had learnt nothing other than to grab its food from its master's hand. In fact, it had even been unable to learn its own name, and so had remained without one. The man spread out his hands in front of us. "Tell me, what shall I do?" he pleaded. "I've made every effort I can until I'm blue in the face. Why, I even see it in my dreams--can you believe it? I see colored lights and tents like these, while I'm in the center of the ring wearing glittering clothes. I bow to the applause of the audience and my dog raises its paws in answer to the welcome, with the people clapping and clapping until their hands are sore..." He looked helplessly into our faces. "It's not that it's stupid--there's no such thing as intelligent dogs and stupid dogs, is there?" "Perhaps it's not well?" said the manager tactfully. The man vehemently denied this and said that the problem was that the dog was against him and was making fun of him. "Look at it." Our eyes were directed at the dog. "It knows I'm talking about it." The dog's eyes blinked as it answered our glances trying to seduce us. "In fact, it knows all this talk by heart because it's what I tell it every night when we go to bed. I say that all dogs learn—there's no such thing as dogs that are stupid. I can't go on stealing things forever. We've had enough of being vagabonds--we must learn a trade." The elephant trainer, who had come back to the manager's office with us after all the hullabaloo with the dog and the cold water, opened his mouth and said: "There you are! It depended on you for everything and now it doesn't want to make an effort." "So it's my fault? Good God, what shall I do, I who have shed my heart's blood trying to teach it something?" He began to weep anew, then stopped for a while to wipe his nose on his sleeve, and raised his face moist with tears. he explained that when he heard there was a circus in town, he had put the dog under his arm and walked for so many miles that his feet were worn out. he had gone hungry, slept on the ground, and suffered such cold as to break one's bones. And now, gladdened by the idea of joining the circus, wasn't there some other job we could employ him on? He could sweep the floors and collect up the animal droppings. Couldn't we give him a bit of a chance, even if it was only for a few

days? Perhaps the dog would come to its senses when it saw other talented dogs, for it wasn't stupid. it was just taking it out on him. Perhaps the day would come when it would stop making fun of him, because there's no such thing as intelligent dogs and stupid dogs—they all learn. Don't they?

Buthaina Al Nasiri Circus Dog

Final Night 1974, 2008 Cairo, Egypt

Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies