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takethehighwaytoheaven · 3 years

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A rose for Emily(part four) by William Faulkner

Warning: As I have stated on the other parts three parts of this story by William Faulkner; this story is messed up so if you are sensitive to topics such as necrophilia, death, poisoning and shit like that this isn’t the story for you

So THE NEXT day we all said, “She will kill herself” ; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will marry him.” Then we said, “She will persuade him yet,” because Homer Barron himself had remarked—he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk`s Club—that he was not marrying a man. Later we said, “Poor Emily behind the jealousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace that the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfiere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister—Miss Emily`s people were Episcopal-to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during the interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister`s wife wrote to Miss Emily`s relations in Alabama.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jewler`s and ordered a man`s toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men`s clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grireson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron—the streets had been finished some time since— was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily`s coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By the time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily`s allies to help circumvent the cousin.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the servant admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening.

And that was the last time we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The servant went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman`s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of her downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris` contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate.

Meanwhile her taxes have been remitted.

The newer generation of children became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from ladies` magazines. The front door closed upon the last one remained closed for good. When the town got free of postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it.

She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the servant grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned to the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one for the down stairs windows—she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering servant to wait on her.

We didn`t even know she was sick; we had long given up trying to get any information from the servant. He talked to no one probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.

She died on one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moly with age and lack of sunlight.

#a rose for emily #William Fulkner #part four #stories #short stories #readers #writers

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aliciakopf · 13 years

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“Hace poco descubrí que la haraganería engendra nuestras virtudes, nuestras más tolerables cualidades; contemplación, ecuanimidad, pereza, dejar en paz al prójimo; buena digestión mental y física; la sabiduría de limitarse a placeres carnales: comer y defecar y fornicar y sentarse al sol, porque no hay nada mejor, comparable, ninguna cosa mejor en este mundo sino vivir por el corto tiempo en que se nos presta aliento, estar vivo y saberlo –ah, sí. Ella me enseñó eso, me marcó también para siempre- nada, nada. Pero hace poco he visto claro, sacando la conclusión lógica, que una de las virtudes primordiales –ahorro, aplicación, independencia- engendra todos los vicios –fanatismo, entrometimiento, suficiencia, miedo y lo peor de todo: decencia-. Nosotros, por ejemplo. Porque el hecho de ser solventes por primera vez, de saber con seguridad de dónde vendría la comida de mañana (el maldito dinero, demasiado: de noche nos quedábamos despiertos planeando cómo gastarlo; para la primavera ya andaríamos con prospectos de compañías de vapores en los bolsillos) me había esclavizado y entregado a la decencia como cualquiera.”

(De “Las palmeras salvajes”, William Faulkner)

#William Fulkner #Las palmeras salvajes

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