Quotes and Books

William Golding's Lord of the Flies manuscript

2011-10-06T00:52:00.000-07:00

The manuscript of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (see also Lord of the Flies quotes) is the subject of a real funny literary anecdote. The following text comes from the rare book dealer Rick Gekoski's book, Tolkien’s Gown and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books. The story also speaks of Golding's need for money and tax evasion paranoia. The text:

"I was rather surprised that he would consider selling it, but he was tormented, in his later years, by anxiety about money. So acute was this that Lady Golding begged me, one evening, to reason with him about it.

‘It’s all right for you,’ he remarked grumpily, ‘you’re a rich man.’ I offered, sight unseen, to swap financial positions with him, before suggesting to him that his worries were symbolic. ‘What’s it really about?’ I asked: ‘loss of power or control? Declining hold on things? It’s quite common to feel that way at your time of life.’

He glared at my impertinence. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he said, ‘it’s about money.’ His financial concerns were, he admitted, exacerbated by the terror that he might go to jail for tax evasion. ‘I have nightmares about it,’ he said.

‘Talk to Rick about it,’ urged Ann. ‘He’ll tell you how silly it all is.’
‘In 1961,’ Golding said, ‘I visited Canada, and did a series of lectures.
Well, one of the universities gave me a cheque for $100.’ He paused, distressed at having to remember and speak of it.
‘And?’
‘I cashed it in Canada, and spent it.’
‘And?’
‘That’s all.’
‘It never happened again?’

He shuddered. ‘Certainly not! I lie awake at night worrying that Inland Revenue will catch up with me, and put me in jail.’ I was careful not to laugh. ‘Well,’ I said judiciously, ‘I don’t suppose you find that many Nobel Prize winners in jail for tax evasion.’ ‘Lester Piggott was sent to jail!’ ‘He was a jockey, and it was for a VAT fraud,’ I said. ‘The figure was apparently four million pounds.’ ‘The principle is the same,’ said Bill, with conviction.

So he had come, I think, to regard the manuscript of Lord of the Flies as a little nest egg, and was receptive to the idea of cashing it in. He was a man of many doubts, but he had never doubted, from the moment of its inception, the value of Lord of the Flies, as either text or object. When he finished the first draft, he announced to his family that one day it would ‘win him the Nobel Prize’. And, though the prize is given for lifetime achievement an not for a single work, he was right. He also had little doubt as to its exact financial value. Though he had asked me to value it, he had a figure in mind.

‘If you can find a nice rich American or Japanese,’ he said, with an attempt at worldly offhandedness utterly foreign to his nature, ‘I would take a million for it.’ ‘A million what?’ I asked, maybe a little puckishly. He seemed to consider. ‘Pounds, of course!’ (As if I had insulted the Queen.) ‘But Bill,’ I said, as reasonably as I could, ‘the only twentieth-century manuscript to have fetched anything remotely like that sort of figure is Kafka’s The Trial.’
He nodded his head, as if this confirmed his view.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘there is no buyer out there at that sort of price.’

‘Surely there’s got to be some super-rich collector who would be dying to have it!’
‘In my experience you don’t get to be super-rich by not caring what you pay for things. Value for money is the only way the rich can protect themselves.’ He glared at me. Clearly I was a rotten dealer.
‘Get me a million,’ he said, ‘and you can have 5 per cent.’
(...)
I suppose the latter figure is now closer to the mark, if you could find a rich American or Japanese. After all, the manuscript of On The Road recently fetched over two million dollars, because that novel had a special place in the heart of at least one rich American. Who knows? Maybe Lord of the Flies does too."

Jean-Paul Sartre philosophical quotes

2011-09-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

There's not much a simple reader like me can say about Sartre's existentialism philosophy. Here are some quotes though:

Let us also note that the I Think does not appear to reflection as the reflected consciousness: it is given through reflected consciousness. To be sure, it is apprehended by intuition and is an object grasped with evidence. But we know what a service Husserl has rendered to philosophy by distinguishing diverse kinds of evidence. Well, it is only too certain that the I of the I Think is an object grasped with neither apodictic nor adequate evidence. The evidence is not apodictic, since by saying I we affirm far more than we know. It is not adequate, for the I is presented as an opaque realily whose content would have to be unfolded.

Thus the temporal dimensions, across which the non-temporal this is given to us with its very a-temporality, assume new qualities when they appear on the object: being-in-itself, objectivity, the exteriority of indifference, absolute dispersion. Time, in so far as it is revealed to an elcstatic temporality which temporalizes itself, is everywhere a self-transcendence and a referring of the before to the after and of the after to the before. But this self-transcendence in so far as it causes itself to be apprehended on the in-itself, does not have to be it; it is made-to-be in it. The cohesion of Time is a pure phantom, the objective reflection (reflet) of the ekstatic project of the For-itself towards itself and the cohesion in motion of human Reality. But this cohesion has no raison d'être. If Time is considered by itself, it immediately dissolves into an absolute multiplicity of instants which considered separately lose all temporal nature and are reduced purely and simply to the total a-temporality of the this. Thus Time is pure nothingness in-itself, which can seem to have a being only by the very act in which the For-itself overleaps it in order to utilize it. This being, however, is that of a particular figure which is raised on the undifferentiated ground of time and which we call the lapse of time. In fact our first apprehension of objective time is practical: it is while being my possibilities beyond co-present being that I discover objective time as the worldly correlate of nothingness which separates me from my possible. From this point of view time appears as a finite, organized form in the heart of an indefinite dispersion.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

The transcendental I is the death of consciousness. Indeed, the existence of consciousness is an absolute because consciousness is consciousness of itself. This is to say that the type of existence of consciousness is to be consciousness of itself. And consciousness is aware of itself in so far ash is consciousness of a transcendent object. All is therefore clear and lucid in consciousness: the object with its characteristic opacity is before consciousness, but consciousness is purely and simply consciousness of being consciousness of that object. This is the law of its existence.

William Golding quotes: Lord of the Flies

2011-09-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

William Golding quotes from the cause - my guess - of his Nobel Prize in literature, the novel Lord of the Flies, which really shook some ground (hehe, Rushdie) when it appeared, although in a limited state at first. It was William Golding's first novel, and sold pretty low in the first years, but after the new-writer-prejudices disappeared, Lord of the Flies became a canonical high-school lecture.

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”

“We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.”

“Sucks to your ass-mar!”

“Maybe there is a beast....maybe it's only us.”

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

“His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of mans heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”

“Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch.

The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.

Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble. The strange, attendant creatures, with their fiery eyes and trailing vapours busied themselves round his head. The body lifted a fraction of an inch from the sand and a bubble of air escaped from the mouth with a wet plop. Then it turned gently in the water.

Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.”

“If faces were different when lit from above or below -- what was a face? What was anything?”

“The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood—and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition.”

“The officer grinned cheerfully at Ralph.
'We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something?'
Ralph nodded.
The officer inspected the little scarecrow in front of him. The kid needed a bath, a haircut, a nose-wipe and a good deal of ointment.
'Nobody killed, I hope? Any dead bodies?'
'Only two. And they've gone.'
The officer leaned down and looked closely at Ralph.
'Two? Killed?'
Ralph nodded again. Behind him, the whole island was shuddering with flame. The officer knew, as a rule, when people were telling the truth. He whistled softly.”

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”

“Percival was mouse-coloured and had not been very attractive even to his mother.”

“Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.”

“The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers... Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.”

“This toy of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch. Jack started to protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy while the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart.”

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

“If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued."
"If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.”

“The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge. Sam twisted and the obscene word shot out of him. "--dance?"
Memory of the dance that none of them had attended shook all four boys convulsively.”

“I'm warning you. I'm going to get waxy. D'you see? You're not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So don't try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else---" Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth. There was blackness within, a blackness that spread.”

William Faulkner quotes on writing, art, literature, war and more

2011-09-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

William Faulkner is one of my favorite writer, with his capacity to create fiction out of nothing, fiction that's more real that reality itself (there's a quote on that below) and also his remarkable use of stream of consciousness narrative. Below we have a small selection of quotes by William Faulkner centered on writing, literature, fiction and art, but also war and the human condition, or even the philosophy of truth. Enjoy!

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth. ”

“You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it can't matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over.”

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”

“It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.”

“The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews. ”

“I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.”

“You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”

“When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

“The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.”

“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”

“A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.”

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

“All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't.”

“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid. ”

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

“She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.”

“...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.”

“I decline to accept the end of man... I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.”

“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know where he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.”

“It's not when you realise that nothing can help you - religion, pride, anything - it's when you realise that you don't need any aid.”

“This does not matter. This is not anything yet. It all depends on what you do with it, afterward.”

“You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

“War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.”

“...I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”

“It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.”

“I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.”

Why Quotes?

2011-09-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

Some people may ask why would someone read/write/use quotes, is it just to show off like pseudo-intelligent-persons do on facebook by sharing a smart-ass fancy quote that they cannot even comprehend (or spell)? Well my answer is no.

A good quote by a good author has two main properties. For once it has the ability of totality or of a whole, i.e. it's part of the entire book/story etc; the second property is it's intrinsic quality, by which it can have a great meaning even outside it's context.

So a good quote has both intrinsic and extrinsic qualities, it's a totality and individuality, and also, even more important, it's valuable to the person that comprehends it!

The use of quotes is like a play, you find a good quote, dealing with an important subject, and you use it as a frame for an essay, which develops or uses part of quote's afferent meanings.

Rapped around - cat - sidewalk - dot

2011-09-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Why would someone do that? I don't know, don't care, don't nothing. Nothing is the keyword of existence. Why? Because.

Trapped in an iron cage, the invisible man, I mean Pablo Neruda's invisible man, becomes visible in a mirror that should reflect everything that he could have been, but in fact reflects his opposite self as a highlighted nothingness of course.

Kirillov, yes, Dostoyevsky's Kirillov, was a free man living outside the iron cage of religion, questioning the moralness of existence, also proclaiming suicide as an act of the god-that-is-a-man, an act of free will.

Same does Camus with his Sisyphus, the main influence on The Stranger or The plague. The moral self is dead, the self is dead, we're H. Miller's non-ego beings, and we're free.

Free to die and play. To play a literary game of writing gibberish and mambo-jumbo with a steady effect of stream of consciousness, playing with reality's medium like it's clay: so there's an open window, where's the cat, and what's that cow doing in the light bulb, and as you walk to the window a darky presence lingers along the way, you turn around and nothing.

The naked woman sits on the couch that didn't existed a second ago. You know the woman, the woman is real. Fiction is real, and so's you being photographer laying still on the sidewalk, in a pool of blood, as the cat meows from three stories high.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Doorbell

2011-09-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

After the short story A Russian Beauty and the more recent quotes from Lolita and also the short story The Passenger, time for some more Vladimir Nabokov, so today we'll have a short story entitled The Doorbell in which Nabokov makes use of his unique narrative and descriptive techniques while also creating complex social relationships and intrigues.

The Doorbell by Vladimir Nabokov:

"SEVEN years had passed since he and she had parted in Petersburg. God, what a crush there had been at the Nikolaevsky Station! Don't stand so close the train is about to start. Well, here we go, good-bye, dearest.... She walked alongside, tall, thin, wearing a raincoat, with a black-and-white scarf around her neck, and a slow current carried her off backward. A Red Army recruit, he took part, reluctantly and confusedly, in the civil war. Then, one beautiful night, to the ecstatic stridulation of prairie crickets, he went over to the Whites. A year later, in 1920, not long before leaving Russia, on the steep, stony Chainaya Street in Yalta, he ran into his uncle, a Moscow lawyer. Why, yes, there was news two letters. She was leaving for Germany and already had obtained a passport. You look fine, young man. And at last Russia let go of him a permanent leave, according to some. Russia had held him for a long time; he had slowly slithered down from north to south, and Russia kept trying to keep him in her grasp, with the taking of Tver, Kharkov, Belgorod, and various interesting little villages, but it was no use. She had in store for him one last temptation, one last gift the Crimea but even that did not help. He left. And on board the ship he made the acquaintance of a young Englishman, a jolly chap and an athlete, who was on his way to Africa.

Nikolay visited Africa, and Italy, and for some reason the Canary Islands, and then Africa again, where he served for a while in the Foreign Legion. At first he recalled her often, then rarely, then again more and more often. Her second husband, the German industrialist Kind, died during the war. He had owned a goodish bit of real estate in Berlin, and Nikolay assumed there was no danger of her going hungry there. But how quickly time passed! Amazing!... Had seven whole years really gone by? During those years he had grown hardier, rougher, had lost an index finger, and had learned two languages Italian and English. The color of his eyes had become lighter and their expression more candid owing to the smooth rustic tan that covered his face. He smoked a pipe. His walk, which had always had the solidity characteristic of short-legged people, now acquired a remarkable rhythm. One thing about him had not changed at all: his laugh, accompanied by a quip and a twinkle.

He had quite a time, chuckling softly and shaking his head, before he finally decided to drop everything and by easy stages make his way to Berlin. On one occasion at a newsstand, somewhere in Italy, he noticed an emigre Russian paper, published in Berlin. He wrote to the paper to place an advertisement under Personal: So-and-so seeks So-and-so. He got no reply. On a side trip to Corsica, he met a fellow Russian, the old journalist Grushevski, who was leaving for Berlin. Make inquiries on my behalf. Perhaps you'll find her. Tell her I am alive and well.... But this source did not bring any news either. Now it was high time to take Berlin by storm. There, on the spot, the search would be simpler. He had a lot of trouble obtaining a German visa, and he was running out of funds. Oh, well, he would get there one way or another.... And so he did. Wearing a trenchcoat and a checked cap, short and broadshouldered, with a pipe between his teeth and a battered valise in his good hand, he exited onto the square in front of the station. There he stopped to admire a great jewel-bright advertisement that inched its way through the darkness, then vanished and started again from another point. He spent a bad night in a stuffy room in a cheap hotel, trying to think of ways to begin the search. The address bureau, the office of the Russian-language newspaper... Seven years. She must really have aged. It was rotten of him to have waited so long; he could have come sooner. But, ah, those years, that stupendous roaming about the world, the obscure ill-paid jobs, chances taken and chucked, the excitement of freedom, the freedom he had dreamed of in childhood!...

It was pure Jack London.... And here he was again: a new city, a suspiciously itchy featherbed, and the screech of a late tram. He groped for his matches, and with a habitual movement of his index stump began pressing the soft tobacco into the pipebowl. When traveling the way he did you forget the names of time; they are crowded out by those of places. In the morning, when Nikolay went out intending to go to the police station, the gratings were down on all the shop fronts. It was a damned Sunday. So much for the address office and the newspaper. It was also late autumn: windy weather, asters in the public gardens, a sky of solid white, yellow trees, yellow trams, the nasal honking of rheumy taxis. A chill of excitement came over him at the idea that he was in the same town as she. A fifty-pfennig coin bought him a glass of port in a cab drivers' bar, and the wine on an empty stomach had a pleasant effect. Here and there in the streets there came a sprinkling of Russian speech: "... Skol'ko raz ya tebe govorila" ("... How many times have I told you"). And again, after the passage of several natives: "... He's willing to sell them to me, but frankly, I..." The excitement made him chuckle and finish each pipeful much more quickly than usual. "... Seemed to be gone, but now Grisha's down with it too...." He considered going up to the next pair of Russians and asking, very politely: "Do you know by any chance Olga Kind, born Countess Karski?" They must all know each other in this bit of provincial Russia gone astray. It was already evening, and, in the twilight, a beautiful tangerine light had filled the glassed tiers of a huge department store when Nikolay noticed, on one of the sides of a front door, a small white sign that said: "I. S. WEINER, DENTIST, FROM PETROGRAD." An unexpected recollection virtually scalded him. This fine friend of ours is pretty well decayed and must go. In the window, right in front of the torture seat, inset glass photographs displayed Swiss landscapes....

The window gave on Moika Street. Rinse, please. And Dr. Weiner, a fat, placid, white-gowned old man in perspicacious glasses, sorted his tinkling instruments. She used to go to him for treatment, and so did his cousins, and they even used to say to each other, when they quarreled for some reason or other, "How would you like a Weiner?" (i.e., a punch in the mouth?). Nikolay dallied in front of the door, on the point of ringing the bell, remembering it was Sunday; he thought some more and rang anyway. There was a buzzing in the lock and the door gave. He went up one flight. A maid opened the door. "No, the doctor is not receiving today." "My teeth are fine," objected Nikolay in very poor German. "Dr. Weiner is an old friend of mine. My name is Galatov I'm sure he remembers me...." "I'll tell him," said the maid.

A moment later a middle-aged man in a frogged velveteen jacket came out into the hallway. He had a carroty complexion and seemed extremely friendly. After a cheerful greeting he added in Russian, "I don't remember you, though there must be a mistake." Nikolay looked at him and apologized: "Afraid so. I don't remember you either. I was expecting to find the Dr. Weiner who lived on Moika Street in Petersburg before the Revolution, but got the wrong one. Sorry." "Oh, that must be a namesake of mine. A common namesake. I lived on Zagorodny Avenue." "We all used to go to him," explained Nikolay, "and well, I thought... You see, I'm trying to locate a certain lady, a Madame Kind, that's the name of her second husband" Weiner bit his lip, looked away with an intent expression, then addressed him again. "Wait a minute.... I seem to recall... I seem to recall a Madame Kind who came to see me here not long ago and was also under the impression. We'll know for sure in a minute. Be kind enough to step into my office."

The office remained a blur in Nikolay's vision. He did not take his eyes off Weiner's impeccable calvities as the latter bent over his appointment book. "We'll know for sure in a minute," he repeated, sunning his fingers across the pages. "We'll know for sure in just a minute. We'll know in just... Here we are. Frau Kind. Gold filling and some other work which I can't make out, there's a blot here." "And what's the first name and patronymic?" asked Nikolay, approaching the table and almost knocking off an ashtray with his cuff. "That's in the book too. Olga Kirillovna."

"Right," said Nikolay with a sigh of relief. "The address is Plannerstrasse fifty-nine, care of Babb," said Weiner with a smack of his lips, and rapidly copied the address on a separate slip. "Second street from here. Here you are. Very happy to be of service. Is she a relative of yours?" "My mother," replied Nikolay. Coming out of the dentist's, he proceeded with a somewhat quickened step. Finding her so easily astonished him, like a card trick. He had never paused to think, while traveling to Berlin, that she might long since have died or moved to a different city, and yet the trick had worked. Weiner had turned out to be a different Weiner and yet fate found a way. Beautiful city, beautiful rain! (The pearly autumn drizzle seemed to fall in a whisper and the streets were dark.) How would she greet him tenderly? Sadly? Or with complete calm. She had not spoiled him as a child. You are forbidden to run through the drawing room while I am playing the piano. As he grew up, he would feel more and more frequently that she did not have much use for him. Now he tried to picture her face, but his thoughts obstinately refused to take on color, and he simply could not gather in a living optical image what he knew in his mind: her tall, thin figure with that loosely assembled look about her; her dark hair with streaks of gray at the temples; her large, pale mouth; the old raincoat she had on the last time he saw her; and the tired, bitter expression of an aging woman, that seemed to have always been on her face even before the death of his father, Admiral Galatov, who had shot himself shortly before the Revolution. Number 51. Eight houses more. He suddenly realized that he was unendurably, indecently perturbed, much more so than he had been, for example, that first time when he lay pressing his sweat-drenched body against the side of a cliff and aiming at an approaching whirlwind, a white scarecrow on a splendid Arabian horse. He stopped just short of Number 59, took out his pipe and a rubber tobacco pouch; stuffed the bowl slowly and carefully, without spilling a single shred; lit up, coddled the flame, drew, watched the fiery mound swell, gulped a mouthful of sweetish, tongue-prickling smoke, carefully expelled it, and with a firm, unhurried step walked up to the house.

The stairs were so dark that he stumbled a couple of times. When, in the dense blackness, he reached the second-floor landing, he struck a match and made out a gilt nameplate. Wrong name. It was only much higher that he found the odd name "Babb." The flamelet burned his fingers and went out. God, my heart is pounding.... He groped for the bell in the dark and rang. Then he removed the pipe from between his teeth and began waiting, feeling an agonizing smile rend his mouth. Then he heard a lock, a bolt made a double resonant sound, and the door, as if swung by a violent wind, burst open. It was just as dark in the anteroom as on the stairs, and out of that darkness floated a vibrant, joyful voice. "The lights are out in the whole building eto oozhas, it's appalling" and Nikolay recognized at once that long emphatic "oo" and on its basis instantly reconstructed down to the most minute feature the person who now stood, still concealed by darkness, in the doorway.

"Sure, can't see a thing," said he with a laugh, and advanced toward her. Her cry was as startled as if a strong hand had struck her. In the dark he found her arms, and shoulders, and bumped against something (probably the umbrella stand). "No, no, it's not possible..." she kept repeating rapidly as she backed away. "Hold still, Mother, hold still for a minute," he said, hitting something again (this time it was the half-open front door, which shut with a great slam). "It can't be... Nicky, Nick " He was kissing her at random, on the cheeks, on the hair, everywhere, unable to see anything in the dark but with some interior vision recognizing all of her from head to toe, and only one thing about her had changed (and even this novelty unexpectedly made him recall his earliest childhood, when she used to play the piano): the strong, elegant smell of perfume as if those intervening years had not existed, the years of his adolescence and her widowhood, when she no longer wore perfume and faded so sorrowfully it seemed as if nothing of that had happened, and he had passed straight from distant exile into childhood.... "It's you. You've come. You're really here," she prattled, pressing her soft lips against him. "It's good.... This is how it should be...." "Isn't there any light anywhere?" Nikolay inquired cheerfully. She opened an inner door and said excitedly, "Yes, come on. I've lit some candles there."

"Well, let me look at you," he said, entering the flickering aura of candlelight and gazing avidly at his mother. Her dark hair had been bleached a very light strawlike shade. "Well, don't you recognize me?" she asked, with a nervous intake of breath, then added hurriedly, "Don't stare at me like that. Come on, tell me all the news! What a tan you have... my goodness! Yes, tell me everything!" That blond bob... And her face was made up with excruciating care. The moist streak of a tear, though, had eaten through the rosy paint, and her mascara-laden lashes were wet, and the powder on the wings of her nose had turned violet. She was wearing a glossy blue dress closed at the throat. And everything about her was unfamiliar, restless and frightening. "You're probably expecting company, Mother," observed Nikolay, and not quite knowing what to say next, energetically threw off his overcoat. She moved away from him toward the table, which was set for a meal and sparkled with crystal in the semidarkness; then she came back toward him, and mechanically glanced at herself in the shadow-blurred mirror. "So many years have passed.... Goodness! I can hardly believe my eyes. Oh, yes, I have friends coming tonight. I'll call them off. I'll phone them. I'll do something. I must call them off.... Oh, Lord...."

She pressed against him, palpating him to find out how real he was. "Calm down, Mother, what's the matter with you this is overdoing it. Let's sit down somewhere. Comment vas-tu? How does life treat you?"... And, for some reason fearing the answers to his questions, he started telling her about himself, in the snappy neat way he had, puffing on his pipe, trying to drown his astonishment in words and smoke. It turned out that, after all, she had seen his ad and had been in touch with the old journalist and been on the point of writing to Nikolay always on the point.... Now that he had seen her face distorted by its make-up and her artificially fair hair he felt that her voice, too, was no longer the same. And as he described his adven-tures, without a moment's pause, he glanced around the half-lit, quivering room, at its awful middle-class trappings the toy cat on the mantelpiece, the coy screen from behind which protruded the foot of the bed, the picture of Friedrich the Great playing the flute, the bookless shelf with the little vases in which the reflected lights darted up and down like mercury.... As his eyes roamed around he also in-spected something he had previously only noticed in passing: that table a table set for two, with liqueurs, a bottle of Asti, two tall wine glasses, and an enormous pink cake adorned with a ring of still unlit little candles. "... Of course, I immediately jumped out of my tentt and what do you think it turned out to be? Come on, guess!" She seemed to emerge from a trance, and gave him a wild look (she was reclining next to him on the divan, her temples compressed between her hands, and her peach-colored stockings gave off an unfamiliar sheen).

"Aren't you listening, Mother?" "Why, yes I am...." And now he noticed something else: she was oddly absent, as if she were listening not to his words but to a doomful thing coming from afar, menacing and inevitable. He went on with his jolly narrative, but then stopped again and asked, "That cake in whose honor is it? Looks awfully good." His mother responded with a flustered smile. "Oh, it's a little stunt. I told you I was expecting company." "It reminded me awfully of Petersburg," said Nikolay. "Remember how you once made a mistake and forgot one candle? I had turned ten, but there were only nine candles. Tu escamotas my birthday. I bawled my head off. And how many do we have here?"

"Oh, what does it matter?" she shouted, and rose, almost as if she wanted to block his view of the table. "Why don't you tell me instead what time it is? I must ring up and cancel the party.... I must do something." "Quarter past seven," said Nikolay. "Trop tard, trop tard!" she raised her voice again. "All right! At this point it no longer matters...." Both fell silent. She resumed her seat. Nikolay was trying to force himself to hug her, to cuddle up to her, to ask, "Listen, Mother what has happened to you? Come on: out with it." He took another look at the brilliant table and counted the candles ringing the cake. There were twenty-five of them.

Twenty-five! And he was already twenty-eight.... "Please don't examine my room like that!" said his mother. "You look like a regular detective! It's a horrid hole. I would gladly move-elsewhere, but I sold the villa that Kind left me." Abruptly she gave.1 small gasp: "Wait a minute what was that? Did you make that noise?" "Yes," answered Nikolay. "I'm knocking the ashes out of my pipe. But tell me: you do still have enough money? You're not having any trouble making ends meet?"

She busied herself with readjusting a ribbon on her sleeve and spoke without looking at him: "Yes.... Of course. He left me a few foreign stocks, a hospital and an ancient prison. A prison!... But 1 must warn you that I have barely enough to live on. For heaven's sake stop knocking with that pipe. I must warn you that I... That I cannot... Oh, you understand, Nick it would be hard for me to support you." "What on earth are you talking about, Mother?" exclaimed Nikolay (and at that moment, like a stupid sun issuing from behind a stupid cloud, the electric light burst forth from the ceiling). "There, we can snuff out those tapers now; it was like squatting in the Mostaga Mausoleum. You see, I do have a small supply of cash, and anyway, I like to be as free as a damned fowl of some sort.... Come, sit down stop running around the room." Tall, thin, bright blue, she stopped in front of him and now, in the full light, he saw how much she had aged, how insistently the wrinkles on her cheeks and forehead showed through the make-up. And thai awful bleached hair!... "You came tumbling in so suddenly," she said and, biting her lips, she consulted a small clock standing on the shelf. "Like snow out of a cloudless sky... It's fast. No, it's stopped. I'm having company to night, and here you arrive. It's a crazy situation...." "Nonsense, Mother. They'll come, they'll see your son has arrived, and very soon they'll evaporate. And before the evening's over you and I will go to some music hall, and have supper somewhere... I remember seeing an African show that was really something1 Imagine about fifty Negroes, and a rather large, the size of, say"

The doorbell buzzed loudly in the front hall. Olga Kirillovna, who had perched on the arm of a chair, gave a start and straightened up. "Wait, I'll get it," said Nikolay, rising. She caught him by the sleeve. Her face was twitching. The bell stopped. The caller waited. "It must be your guests," said Nikolay. "Your twenty-five guests. We have to let them in." His mother gave a brusque shake of her head and resumed listening intently. "It isn't right" began Nikolay. She pulled at his sleeve, whispering, "Don't you dare! I don't want to... Don't you dare...."

The bell started buzzing again, insistently and irritably this time. And it buzzed on for a long time. "Let me go," said Nikolay. "This is silly. If somebody rings you have to answer the door. What are you frightened of?" "Don't you dare do you hear," she repeated, spasmodically clutching at his hand. "I implore you.... Nicky, Nicky, Nicky!... Don't!" The bell stopped. It was replaced by a series of vigorous knocks, produced, it seemed, by the stout knob of a cane. Nikolay headed resolutely for the front hall. But before he reached it his mother had grabbed him by the shoulders, and tried with all her might to drag him back, whispering all the while, "Don't you dare.... Don't you dare.... For God's sake!..." The bell sounded again, briefly and angrily. "It's your business," said Nikolay with a laugh and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walked the length of the room. This is a real nightmare, he thought, and chuckled again. The ringing had stopped. All was still. Apparently the ringer had got fed up and left. Nikolay went up to the table, contemplated the splendid cake with its bright frosting and twenty-five festive candles, and the two wineglasses. Nearby, as if hiding in the bottle's shadow, lay a small white cardboard box. He picked it up and took off the lid. It contained a brand-new, rather tasteless silver cigarette case.

"And that's that," said Nikolay. His mother, who was half-reclining on the couch with her face buried in a cushion, was convulsed with sobs. In previous years he had often seen her cry, but then she had cried quite differently: while sit-ting at table, for instance, she would cry without turning her face away, and blow her nose loudly, and talk, talk, talk; yet now she was weeping so girlishly, was lying there with such abandon... and there was something so graceful about the curve of her spine and about the way one foot, in its velvet slipper, was touching the floor.... One might almost think that it was a young, blond woman crying.... And her crumpled handkerchief was lying on the carpet just the way it was supposed to, in that pretty scene. Nikolay uttered a Russian grunt (kryak) and sat down on the edge of her couch. He kryak'ed again. His mother, still hiding her face, said into the cushion, "Oh, why couldn't you have come earlier? Even one year earlier... Just one year!..."

"I wouldn't know," said Nikolay. "It's all over now," she sobbed, and tossed her light hair. "All over. I'll be fifty in May. Grown-up son comes to see aged mother. And why did you have to come right at this moment... tonight!" Nikolay put on his overcoat (which, contrary to European custom, he had simply thrown into a corner), took his cap out of a pocket, and sat down by her again. "Tomorrow morning I'll move on," he said, stroking the shiny blue silk of his mother's shoulder. "I feel an urge to head north now, to Norway, perhaps or else out to sea for some whale fishing. I'll write you. In a year or so we'll meet again, then perhaps I'll stay longer. Don't be cross with me because of my wanderlust!" Quickly she embraced him and pressed a wet cheek to his neck. Then she squeezed his hand and suddenly cried out in astonishment. "Blown off by a bullet," laughed Nikolay. "Good-bye, my dearest." She felt the smooth stub of his finger and gave it a cautious kiss. Then she put her arm around her son and walked with him to the door.

"Please write often.... Why are you laughing? All the powder must have come off my face?" And no sooner had the door shut after him than she flew, her blue dress rustling, to the telephone."

Vladimir Nabokov: The Passenger

2011-09-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

After the short story A Russian Beauty and the more recent quotes from Lolita, time for some more Vladimir Nabokov, so today we'll have a short story entitled The Passenger in which Nabokov plays a little with the narrators perspective, being a story in a story about a story with people talking about writing and fiction techniques, about the story of course.

Vladimir Nabokov's short story The Passenger:

"Yes, Life is more talented than we," sighed the writer, tapping the cardboard mouthpiece of his Russian cigarette against the lid of his case. "The plots Life thinks up now and then! How can we compete with that goddess? Her works are untranslatable, indescribable."

"Copyright by the author," suggested the critic, smiling; he was a modest, myopic man with slim, restless fingers. "Our last recourse, then, is to cheat," continued the writer, absentmindedly throwing a match into the critic's empty wineglass. "All that's left to us is to treat her creations as a film producer does a famous novel. The producer needs to prevent servant maids from being bored on Saturday nights; therefore he alters the novel beyond recognition; minces it, turns it inside out, throws out hundreds of episodes, introduces new characters and incidents he has invented himself and all this for the sole purpose of having an entertaining film unfold without a hitch, punishing virtue in the beginning and vice at the end, a film perfectly natural in terms of its own conventions and, above all, furnished with an unexpected but all-resolving outcome. Exactly thus do we, writers, alter the themes of Life to suit us in our drive toward some kind of conventional harmony, some kind of artistic conciseness. We spice our savorless plagiarisms with our own devices.

We think that Life's performance is too sweeping, too uneven, that her genius is too untidy. To indulge our readers we cut out of Life's untrammeled novels our neat little tales for the use of schoolchildren. Allow me, in this connection, to impart to you the following experience. "I happened to be traveling in the sleeping car of an express. I love the process of settling into viatic quarters the cool linen of the berth, the slow passage of the station's departing lights as they start moving behind the black windowpane. I remember how pleased I was that there was nobody in the bunk above me. I undressed, I lay down supine with my hands clasped under my head, and the lightness of the scant regulation blanket was a treat in comparison to the puffiness of hotel featherbeds. After some private musings at the time I was anxious to write a story about the life of railway-car cleaning women I put out the light and was soon asleep. And here let me use a device cropping up with dreary frequency in the sort of story to which mine promises to belong. Here it is that old device which you must know so well: 'In the middle of the night I woke up suddenly.' What follows, however, is something less stale. I woke up and saw a foot."

"Excuse me, a what?" interrupted the modest critic, leaning forward and lifting his finger. "I saw a foot," repeated the writer. "The compartment was now lighted. The train stood at a station. It was a man's foot, a foot of considerable size, in a coarse sock, through which the bluish toenail had worked a hole. It was planted solidly on a step of the bed ladder close to my face, and its owner, concealed from my sight by the upper bunk roofing me, was just on the point of making a last effort to hoist himself onto his ledge. I had ample time to inspect that foot in its gray, black-checkered sock and also part of the leg: the violet vee of the garter on the side of the stout calf and its little hairs nastily sticking out through the mesh of the long underwear. It was altogether a most repellent limb. While I looked, it tensed, the tenacious big toe moved once or twice; then, finally, the whole extremity vigorously pushed off and soared out of sight. From above came grunting and snuffling sounds leading one to conclude that the man was preparing to sleep. The light went out, and a few moments later the train jerked into motion.

"I don't know how to explain it to you, but that limb anguished me most oppressively. A resilient varicolored reptile. I found it disturbing that all I knew of the man was that evil-looking leg. His figure, his face, I never saw. His berth, which formed a low, dark ceiling over me, now seemed to have come lower; I almost felt its weight. No matter how hard I tried to imagine the aspect of my nocturnal fellow traveler all I could visualize was that conspicuous toenail which showed its bluish mother-of-pearl sheen through a hole in the wool of the sock. It may seem strange, in a general way, that such trifles should bother me, but, per contra, is not every writer precisely a person who bothers about trifles? Anyhow, sleep did not come. I kept listening had my unknown companion started to snore? Apparently he was not snoring but moaning. Of course, the knocking of train wheels at night is known to encourage aural hallucinations; yet I could not get over the impression that from up there, above me, came sounds of an unusual nature. I raised myself on one elbow. The sounds grew more distinct. The man on the upper berth was sobbing."

"What's that?" interrupted the critic. "Sobbing? I see. Sorry didn't quite catch what you said." And, again dropping his hands in his lap and inclining his head to one side, the critic went on listening to the narrator. "Yes, he was sobbing, and his sobs were atrocious. They choked him; he would noisily let his breath out as if having drunk at one gulp a quart of water, whereupon there followed rapid spasms of weeping with the mouth shut the frightful parody of a cackle and again he would draw in air and again let it out in short expirations of sobbing, with his mouth now open to judge by the ha-ha-ing note. And all this against the shaky background of hammering wheels, which by this token became something like a moving stairway along which his sobs went up and came down. I lay motionless and listened and felt, incidentally, that my face in the dark looked awfully silly, for it is always embarrassing to hear a stranger sobbing. And mind you, I was helplessly shackled to him by the fact of our sharing the same two-berth compartment, in the same unconcernedly rushing train. And he did not stop weeping; those dreadful arduous sobs kept up with me: we both I below, the listener, and he overhead, the weeping one sped sideways into night's remoteness at eighty kilometers an hour, and only a railway crash could have cleft our involuntary link.

"After a while he seemed to stop crying, but no sooner was I about to drop off than his sobs started to swell again and I even seemed to hear unintelligible words which he uttered in a kind of sepulchral, belly-deep voice between convulsive sighs. He was silent again, only snuffling a bit, and I lay with my eyes closed and saw in fancy his disgusting foot in its checkered sock. Somehow or other I managed to fall asleep; and at half past five the conductor wrenched the door open to call me. Sitting on my bed and knocking my head every minute against the edge of the upper berth I hurried to dress. Before going out with my bags into the corridor, I turned to look up at the upper berth, but the man was lying with his back to me, and had covered his head with his blanket. It was morning in the corridor, the sun had just risen, the fresh, blue shadow of the train ran over the grass, over the shrubs, swept sinuously up the slopes, rippled across the trunks of flickering birches and an oblong pondlet shone dazzlingly in the middle of a field, then narrowed, dwindled to a silvery slit, and with a rapid clatter a cottage scuttled by, the tail of a road whisked under a crossing gate and once more the numberless birches dizzied one with their flickering, sun-flecked palisade.

"The only other people in the corridor were two women with sleepy, sloppily made-up faces, and a little old man wearing suede gloves and a traveling cap. I detest rising early: for me the most ravishing dawn in the world cannot replace the hours of delicious morning sleep; and therefore I limited myself to a grumpy nod when the old gentleman asked me if I, too, was getting off at... he mentioned a big town where we were due in ten or fifteen minutes. "The birches suddenly dispersed, half a dozen small houses poured down a hill, some of them, in their haste, barely missing being run over by the train; then a huge purple-red factory strode by flashing its windowpanes; somebody's chocolate hailed us from a ten-yard poster; another factory followed with its bright glass and chimneys; in short, there happened what usually happens when one is nearing a city. But all at once, to our surprise, the train braked convulsively and pulled up at a desolate whistle-stop, where an express had seemingly no business to dawdle. I also found it surprising that several policemen stood out there on the platform. I lowered a window and leaned out. 'Shut it, please,' said one of the men politely. The passengers in the corridor displayed some agitation.

A conductor passed and I asked what was the matter. 'There's a criminal on the train,' he replied, and briefly explained that in the town at which we had stopped in the middle of the night, a murder had occurred on the eve: a betrayed husband had shot his wife and her lover. The ladies exclaimed 'akh!,' the old gentleman shook his head. Two policemen and a rosy-cheeked, plump, bowler-hatted detective who looked like a bookmaker entered the corridor. I was asked to go back to my berth. The policemen remained in the corridor, while the detective visited one compartment after another. I showed him my passport. His reddish-brown eyes glided over my face; he returned my passport. We stood, he and I, in that narrow coupe on the upper bunk of which slept a dark-cocooned figure. 'You may leave,' said the detective, and stretched his arm toward that upper darkness: 'Papers, please.' The blanketed man kept on snoring. As I lingered in the doorway, I still heard that snoring and seemed to make out through it the sibilant echoes of his nocturnal sobs. 'Please, wake up,' said the detective, raising his voice; and with a kind of professional jerk he pulled at the edge of the blanket at the sleeper's nape. The latter stirred but continued to snore. The detective shook him by the shoulder. This was rather sickening. I turned away and stared at the window across the corridor, but did not really see it, while listening with my whole being to what was happening in the compartment.

"And imagine, I heard absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The man on the upper berth sleepily mumbled something, the detective distinctly demanded his passport, distinctly thanked him, then went out and entered another compartment. That is all. But think only how nice it would have seemed from the writer's viewpoint, naturally if the evil-footed, weeping passenger had turned out to be a murderer, how nicely his tears in the night could have been explained, and, what is more, how nicely all that would have fitted into the frame of my night journey, the frame of a short story. Yet, it would appear that the plan of the Author, the plan of Life, was in this case, as in all others, a hundred times nicer." The writer sighed and fell silent, as he sucked his cigarette, which had gone out long ago and was now all chewed up and damp with saliva. The critic was gazing at him with kindly eyes.

"Confess," spoke the writer again, "that beginning with the moment when I mentioned the police and the unscheduled stop, you were sure my sobbing passenger was a criminal?"

"I know your manner," said the critic, touching his interlocutor's shoulder with the tips of his fingers and, in a gesture peculiar to him, instantly snatching back his hand. "If you were writing a detective story, your villain would have turned out to be not the person whom none of the characters suspect but the person whom everybody in the story suspects from the very beginning, thus fooling the experienced reader who is used to solutions proving to be not the obvious ones. I am well aware that you like to produce an impression of inexpectancy by means of the most natural denouement; but don't get carried away by your own method. There is much in life that is casual, and there is also much that is unusual. The Word is given the sublime right to enhance chance and to make of the transcendental something that is not accidental. Out of the present case, out of the dance of chance, you could have created a well-rounded story if you had transformed your fellow traveler into a murderer."

The writer sighed again.

"Yes, yes, that did occur to me. I might have added several details. I would have alluded to the passionate love he had for his wife. All kinds of inventions are possible. The trouble is that we are in the dark maybe Life had in mind something totally different, something much more subtle and deep. The trouble is that I did not learn, and shall never learn, why the passenger cried."

"I intercede for the Word," gently said the critic. "You, as a writer of fiction, would have at least thought up some brilliant solution: your character was crying, perhaps, because he had lost his wallet at the station. I once knew someone, a grown-up man of martial appearance", who would weep or rather bawl when he had a toothache. No, thanks, no don't pour me any more. That's sufficient, that's quite sufficient."

Cannibalism in the cars - Mark Twain

2011-09-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

As a child and teenager I loved Mark Twain's short stories, and I feel as they had an impact on my development in both literary and social ways.

Cannibalism in the cars by Mark Twain:

"I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly intelligent and entertaining. When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask questions about various public men, and about Congressional affairs; and I saw very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and Representatives in the Chambers of the national Legislature. Presently two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other:

“Harris, if you’ll do that for me, I’ll never forget you, my boy.” My new comrade’s eye lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a happy memory, I thought. Then his face settled into thoughtfulness—almost into gloom. He turned to me and said, “Let me tell you a story; let me give you a secret chapter of my life—a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its events transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt me.” I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure, speaking sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always with feeling and earnestness. On the 19th of December, 1853, I started from St. Louis on the evening train bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all told. There were no ladies and no children.

We were in excellent spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey bade fair to be a happy one; and no individual in the party, I think, had even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo. At 11 P.M. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small village of Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away toward the Jubilee Settlements. The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely, across the level desert, driving the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy sea. The snow was deepening fast; and we knew, by the diminished speed of the train, that the engine was plowing through it with steadily increasing difficulty. Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes, in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves across the track. Conversation began to flag.

Cheerfulness gave place to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit. At two o’clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by the ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me instantly—we were captives in a snow-drift! “All hands to the rescue!” Every man sprang to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness, the billowy snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us all.

Shovels, hands, boards—anything, everything that could displace snow, was brought into instant requisition. It was a weird picture, that small company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive’s reflector. One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts. The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away. And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the driving-wheel! With a free track before us we should still have been helpless. We entered the car wearied with labor, and very sorrowful. We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation. We had no provisions whatever—in this lay our chief distress. We could not freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our only comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the disheartening decision of the conductor, viz., that it would be death for any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that. We could not send for help, and even if we could it would not come. We must submit, and await, as patiently as we might, succor or starvation! I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary chill when those words were uttered. Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled themselves among the flickering shadows to think—to forget the present, if they could—to sleep, if they might.

The eternal night—it surely seemed eternal to us—wore its lagging hours away at last, and the cold gray dawn broke in the east. As the light grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out of the windows upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheerless, indeed!— not a living thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifted hither and thither before the wind—a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above. All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another lingering dreary night—and hunger. Another dawning—another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger, hopeless watching for succor that could not come. A night of restless slumber, filled with dreams of feasting— wakings distressed with the gnawings of hunger.

The fourth day came and went—and the fifth! Five days of dreadful imprisonment! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it a sign of awful import—the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely shaping itself in every heart—a something which no tongue dared yet to frame into words. The sixth day passed—the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must out now! That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready to leap from every lip at last! Nature had been taxed to the utmost—she must yield. RICHARD H. GASTON of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale, rose up. All knew what was coming. All prepared—every emotion, every semblance of excitement was smothered—only a calm, thoughtful seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild. “Gentlemen: It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!”

MR. JOHN J. WILLIAMS of Illinois rose and said: “Gentlemen—I nominate the Rev. James Sawyer of Tennessee.”
MR. WM. R. ADAMS of Indiana said: “I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote of New York.”
MR. CHARLES J. LANGDON: “I nominate Mr. Samuel A. Bowen of St. Louis.”
MR. SLOTE: “Gentlemen—I desire to decline in favor of Mr. John A. Van Nostrand, Jun., of New Jersey.”
MR. GASTON: “If there be no objection, the gentleman’s desire will be acceded to.”
MR. VAN NOSTRAND objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected. The resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and refused upon the same grounds.
MR. A. L. BASCOM of Ohio: “I move that the nominations now close, and that the House proceed to an election by ballot.”

MR. SAWYER: “Gentlemen—I protest earnestly against these proceedings. They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming. I must beg to move that they be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting and proper officers to assist him, and then we can go on with the business before us understandingly.”
MR. BELL of Iowa: “Gentlemen—I object. This is no time to stand upon forms and ceremonious observances. For more than seven days we have been without food. Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our distress. I am satisfied with the nominations that have been made—every gentleman present is, I believe—and I, for one, do not see why we should not proceed at once to
elect one or more of them. I wish to offer a resolution—”
MR. GASTON: “It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under the rules, thus bringing about the very delay you wish to avoid. The gentleman from New Jersey—”
MR. VAN NOSTRAND: “Gentlemen—I am a stranger among you; I have not sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a delicacy—”
MR. MORGAN of Alabama (interrupting): “I move the previous question.”

The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course. The motion to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr. Gaston was chosen chairman, Mr. Blake, secretary, Messrs. Holcomb, Dyer, and Baldwin a committee on nominations, and Mr. R. M. Howland, purveyor, to assist the committee in making selections.

A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little caucusing followed. At the sound of the gavel the meeting assembled, and the committee reported in favor of Messrs. George Ferguson of Kentucky, Lucien Herrman of Louisiana, and W. Messick of Colorado as candidates. The report was accepted.

MR. ROGERS of Missouri: “Mr. President—The report being properly before the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr. Herrman that of Mr. Lucius Harris of St. Louis, who is well and honorably known to us all. I do not wish to be understood as casting the least reflection upon the high character and standing of the gentleman from Louisiana—far from it. I respect and esteem him as much as any gentleman here present possibly can; but none of us can be blind to the fact that he had lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here than any among us—none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure his own motives may be, has really less nutriment in him—”

THE CHAIR: “The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat. The Chair cannot allow the integrity of the committee to be questioned save by the regular course, under the rules. What action will the House take upon the gentleman’s motion?”

MR. HALLIDAY of Virginia: “I move to further amend the report by substituting Mr. Harvey Davis of Oregon for Mr. Messick. It may be urged by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have rendered Mr. Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at toughness? Is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles? Is this a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance? No, gentlemen, bulk is what we desire, substance, weight, bulk—these are the supreme requisites now—not talent, not genius, not education. I insist upon my motion.”

MR. MORGAN (excitedly): “Mr. Chairman—I do most strenuously object to this amendment. The gentleman from Oregon is old, and furthermore is bulky only in bone—not in flesh. I ask the gentleman from Virginia if it is soup we want instead of solid sustenance? if he would delude us with shadows? if he would mock our suffering with an Oregonian specter? I ask him if he can look upon the anxious faces around him, if he can gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the beating of our expectant hearts, and still thrust this famine-stricken fraud upon us? I ask him if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark future, and still unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this ruin, this tottering swindle, this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from Oregon’s inhospitable shores? Never!” [Applause.]

The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost. Mr. Harris was substituted on the first amendment. The balloting then began. Five ballots were held without a choice. On the sixth, Mr. Harris was elected, all voting for him but himself. It was then moved that his election should be ratified by acclamation, which was lost, in consequence of his again voting against himself.

MR. RADWAY moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates, and go into an election for breakfast. This was carried. On the first ballot there was a tie, half the members favoring one candidate on account of his youth, and half favoring the other on account of his superior size. The President gave the casting vote for the latter, Mr. Messick. This decision created considerable dissatisfaction among the friends of Mr. Ferguson, the defeated candidate, and there was some talk of demanding a new ballot; but in the midst of it a motion to adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once. The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson faction from the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then, when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr. Harris was ready drove all thought of it to the winds. We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our vision for seven torturing days.

How changed we were from what we had been a few short hours before! Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger, feverish anxiety, desperation, then; thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep for utterance now. That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful life. The winds howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prisonhouse, but they were powerless to distress us any more. I liked Harris. He might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree of satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored, but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fiber, give me Harris. Messick had his good points—I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish to do it—but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be, sir—not a bit. Lean?—why, bless me!—and tough? Ah, he was very tough! You could not imagine it—you could never imagine anything like it. “Do you mean to tell me that—”

“Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so afterward. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was a little rare, but very good. And then the next morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to—handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages fluently—a perfect gentleman—he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy. For supper we had that Oregon patiarch, and he was a fraud, there is no question about it—old, scraggy, tough, nobody can picture the reality. I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but I will wait for another election. And Grimes of Illinois said, ‘Gentlemen, I will wait also. When you elect a man that has something to recommend him, I shall be glad to join you again.’ It soon became evident that there was general dissatisfaction with Davis of Oregon, and so, to preserve the good will that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had had Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker of Georgia was chosen. He was splendid! Well, well—after that we had Doolittle, and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about McElroy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an organ-grinder, and a gentleman by the name of Buckminster—a poor stick of a vagabond that wasn’t any good for company and no account for breakfast. We were glad we got him elected before relief came.” “And so the blessed relief did come at last?” “Yes, it came one bright, sunny morning, just after election. John Murphy was the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to testify; but John Murphy came home with us, in the train that came to succor us, and lived to marry the widow Harris—”
“Relict of—”
“Relict of our first choice. He married her, and is happy and respected and prosperous yet. Ah, it was like a novel, sir—it was like a romance. This is my stopping-place, sir; I must bid you good-by. Any time that you can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to have you. I like you, sir; I have conceived an affection for you. I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir. Good day, sir, and a pleasant journey.”

He was gone. I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my life. But in my soul I was glad he was gone. With all his gentleness of manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye upon me; and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly stood still!

I was bewildered beyond description. I did not doubt his word; I could not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my thoughts into hopeless confusion. I saw the conductor looking at me. I said, “Who is that man?”

“He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death. He got so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three months afterward. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole car-load of people he talks about. He would have finished the crowd by this time, only he had to get out here. He had got their names as pat as A B C. When he gets all eat up but himself, he always says: ‘Then the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived, and there being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here.’”

I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a bloodthirsty cannibal."

The History of the First Old Man and the Hind - Arabian nights (One Thousand and One Nights)

2011-09-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

The History of the First Old Man and the Hind is the second story from part one of the collection of short stories, folk tales and arabic mythology book Arabian nights (One Thousand and One Nights, click here for the first story), a book considered to be a gem of the Orient and was highly influential on western literature and philosophy, especially on Borges and postmodernists, oh, and of course Salman Rushdie (e.g.: The Ground Beneath Her Feet) or Umberto Eco (see wiki also):

I AM now going,” said he, “to begin my tale, and I request your attention. The hind, that you see here, is my cousin; nay more, she is my wife. When I married her, she was only twelve years old; and she ought therefore to look upon me not only as her relation and husband, but even as her father.

“We lived together thirty years, without having any children; this, however, did not decrease my kindness and regard for her. Still my desire for an heir was so great, that I purchased a female slave, who bore me a son of great promise and beauty. Soon afterwards my wife was seized with jealousy, and consequently took a great aversion to both mother and child; yet she so well concealed her feelings that I, alas! never had a suspicion of them till too late.

“In the meantime my son grew up; and he was about ten years old when I was obliged to make a journey. Before my departure, I recommended both the slave and the child to my wife, whom I trusted implicitly, and begged her to take care of them during my absence, which would last not less than a year. Now was the time she endeavoured to gratify her hatred. She applied herself to the study of magic; and when she was sufficiently skilled in that diabolical art to execute the horrible design she meditated, the wretch carried my son to a distant place. There, by her enchantments, she changed him into a calf; and giving the creature to my steward, told him it was a purchase of hers, and ordered him to rear it. Not satisfied even with this infamous action, she changed the slave into a cow, which she also sent to my steward.

“Immediately on my return I inquired after my child and his mother. ‘Your slave is dead,’ said she, ‘and it is now more than two months since I have beheld your son; nor do I know what is become of him.’ I was deeply affected at the death of the slave; but as my son had only disappeared, I consoled myself with the hope that he would soon be found. Eight months however passed, and he did not return; nor could I learn any tidings of him. The festival of the great Bairamd was approaching; to celebrate it, I ordered my steward to bring me the fattest cow I had, for a sacrifice. He obeyed my commands; and the cow he brought me was my own slave, the unfortunate mother of my son. Having bound her, I was about to offer her up; but she lowed most sorrowfully, and tears even fell from her eyes. This seemed to me so extraordinary, that I could not but feel compassion for her; and I was unable to strike the fatal blow. I therefore ordered that she should be taken away, and another cow brought.

The merchant and the Genie.
“My wife, who was present, seemed angry at my compassion, and resisted an order which defeated her malice. ‘What are you about, husband? ’ said she. ‘Why not sacrifice this cow? Your steward has not a more beautiful one, nor one more proper for the purpose.’ Wishing to oblige my wife, I again approached the cow; and struggling with the pity that held my hand, I was again going to give the mortal blow, when the victim a second time disarmed me by her renewed tears and moanings. I then delivered the instruments into the hands of my steward.

‘Take them,’ I cried, ‘and perform the sacrifice yourself, for the lamentations and tears of the animal have overcome me.’

“The steward was less compassionate than I; he sacrificed her. On taking off her skin we found her greatly emaciated, though she had appeared very fat. ‘Take her away,’ said I, to the steward, greatly mortified. ‘I give her to you to do as you please with; feast upon her with any friend you choose; and if you have a very fat calf, bring it in her place.’ I did not inquire what he did with the cow, but he had not been gone long before a remarkably fine calf was brought out. Although I was ignorant that this calf was my own son, yet I felt a sensation of pity arise in my breast at the first sight of him. As soon as he perceived me, he made so great an effort to come to me, that he broke his cord. He lay down at my feet, with his head on the ground, as if he endeavoured to seek my compassion, and would beg me not to have the cruelty to take away his life. He was striving in this manner to make me understand that he was my son.

“I was still more surprised and affected by this action, than I had been by the tears of the cow. I felt a kind of tender pity, and a great interest for him; or, to speak more correctly, nature guided me to what was my duty. ‘Go back,’ I cried, ‘and take all possible care of this calf, and in its stead bring me another directly.’

“So soon as my wife heard this, she exclaimed, ‘What are you about, husband? Do not, I pray you, sacrifice any calf but this.’ ‘Wife,’ answered I, ‘I will not sacrifice him; I wish to preserve him, therefore do not oppose it.’ This wicked woman, however, did not agree to my wish. She hated my son too much to suffer him to remain alive; and she continued to demand his death so obstinately, that I was compelled to yield. I bound the calf; and, taking the fatal knife, was going to bury it in the throat of my son, when he turned his tearful eyes so persuasively upon me, that I had no power to execute my intention. The knife fell from my hand, and I told my wife I was determined to have another calf brought. She tried every means to induce me to alter my mind. I continued firm, however, in my resolution, in spite of all she could say; promising, in order to appease her, to sacrifice this calf at the feast of Bairam on the following year.

“The next morning my steward desired to speak with me in private. ‘I am come,’ said he, ‘to give you some information, which, I trust, will afford you pleasure. I have a daughter, who has some little knowledge of magic; and yesterday, as I was bringing back the calf which you were unwilling to sacrifice, I observed that she smiled on seeing it, and the next moment began to weep. I inquired of her the cause of two such contrary emotions. ‘My dear father,’ she answered, ‘that calf, which you bring back, is the son of our master; I smiled with joy at seeing him still alive, and wept at the recollection of his mother, who was yesterday sacrificed in the shape of a cow. These two metamorphoses have been contrived by the enchantments of our master’s wife, who hated both the mother and the child.’ This,’ continued the steward, ‘is what my daughter said, and I come to report it to you.’ Imagine, O Genie, my surprise at hearing these words: I immediately went with my steward, to speak to his daughter myself. I went first to the stable, where the calf had been placed; he could not return my caresses; but he received them in a way which convinced me that he was really my son. “When the daughter of the steward made her appearance, I asked her if she could restore the poor creature to his former shape.—‘Yes,’ replied she, ‘I can.’ ‘Ah!’ exclaimed I, ‘if you can perform such a miracle, I will make you the mistress of all I possess.’

She then answered with a smile, ‘You are our master, and I know how much we are bound to you; but I must mention, that I can restore your son to his own form, only on two conditions: firstly, that you bestow him upon me for my husband; and secondly, that I may be permitted to punish her who changed him into a calf.’ ‘To the first condition,’ I replied, ‘I agree with all my heart; I will do still more, I will give you, for your own separate use, a considerable sum of money, independent of what I destine for my son. You shall perceive that I properly value the important service you do me. I agree also to the stipulation concerning my wife; for a horrible crime like this is worthy of punishment. I abandon her to you. Do what you please with her; I only entreat you to spare her life.’ ‘I will treat her then,’ she said, ‘as she has treated your son.’ To this I gave my consent, provided she first restored me my son.

“The damsel then took a vessel full of water; and pronouncing over it some words I did not understand, she thus addressed the calf: ‘O calf, if thou hast been created as thou now appearest, by the all-powerful Sovereign of the world, retain that form; but, if thou art a man, and hast been changed by enchantment into a calf, reassume thy natural figure!’ As she said this, she threw the water over him, and he instantly regained his own form. “ ‘My child! my dear child!’ I exclaimed; ‘it is Allah, who hath sent this damsel to us, to destroy the horrible charm with which you were enthralled, and to avenge the evil that has been done to you and your mother. I am sure your gratitude will lead you to accept her for a wife, as I have already promised for you.’ He joyfully consented; but before they were united the damsel changed my wife into this hind, which you see here. I wished her to have this form in preference to any other, that we might see her, without repugnance, in our family.

“Since that time my son has become a widower, and is now travelling. Many years have passed since I have heard any thing of him; I have therefore now set out with a view to gain some information; and as I did not like to trust my wife to the care of any one, during my absence, I thought proper to carry her with me. This is the history of myself and the hind. Can any thing be more wonderful?” “I agree with you,” said the Genie, “and in consequence, I remit to this merchant a third part of his penalty.”

“As soon as the first old man had finished his history,” continued Scheherazade, “the second, who led the two black dogs, said to the Genie, ‘I will tell you what has happened to me, and to these two dogs, which you see here; and I am sure you will find my history still more astonishing than that which you have heard. But when I have told it, will you forgive this merchant another third of his penalty?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the Genie, ‘provided your history surpass that of the hind.’ ” This being settled, the second old man began as follows:—"

(to be continued)

The Story of the Merchant and the Genie - Arabian nights (One Thousand and One Nights)

2011-09-29T06:10:00.001-07:00

The Story of the Merchant and the Genie is the first story from part one of the collection of short stories, folk tales and arabic mythology book Arabian nights (One Thousand and One Nights), a book considered to be a gem of the Orient and was highly influential on western literature and philosophy, especially on Borges and postmodernists:

"SIR, there was formerly a merchant who had a great estate in lands, goods, and money. He had numbers of deputies, factors, and slaves, One day, being under the necessity of going a long journey, he mounted his horse, and put a wallet behind him with some biscuits and dates, because he had to pass over a great desert, where he could procure no provisions. He arrived without accident at the end of his journey; and, having despatched his business, took horse again, in order to return home.

“On the fourth day of his journey, being in want of refreshment, he alighted from his horse, and sitting down by a fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his wallet; and, as he ate his dates, he threw the stones about on all sides. When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, b he washed his hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He was still on his knees, when he saw a Genie appear, white with age, and of enormous stature. The monster advanced towards him, scimitar in hand, and spoke to him in a terrible voice, thus:
‘Rise up, that I may kill thee, as thou hast killed my son.’ The merchant, frightened at the hideous shape of the giant, answered: ‘How can I have slain thy son? I do not know him, nor have I ever seen him.’ ‘What!’ replied the Genie, ‘didst not thou take dates out of thy wallet, and after eating them, didst not thou throw the shells on all sides?’

‘I do not deny it,’ answered the merchant. ‘Then,’ said the Genie, ‘I tell thee thou hast killed my son; and the way was thus: When thou threwest the date stones, my son was passing by, and one of them was flung into his eye, and killed him; therefore I must kill thee.” ‘Ah! my lord, pardon me,’ cried the merchant; ‘for, if I have killed thy son, it was accidentally; therefore suffer me to live.’

‘No, no,’ said the Genie, ‘I must kill thee, since thou hast killed my son.’ The Genie then threw the merchant upon the ground, and lifted up the scimitar to cut off his head.” When Scheherazade spoke these words, she perceived it was day; and knowing that the Sultan rose betimes in the morning, she held her peace. “Oh sister,” said Dinarzade, “what a wonderful story is this!” “The remainder of it,” said Scheherazade, “is more surprising; and you will be of my mind, if the Sultan will let me live this day, and permit me to continue the story to-night.” Shahriar, who had listened to Scheherazade with pleasure, said to himself, “I will stay till to-morrow, for I can at any time put her to death, when she has made an end of her story.”—So, having resolved to defer her death till the following day, he arose, and having prayed, went to the council.

The grand vizier, in the mean time, was in a state of cruel suspense. Unable to sleep, he passed the night in lamenting the approaching fate of his daughter, whose executioner he was destined to be. How great was his surprise when the Sultan entered the council chamber, without giving him the horrible order he expected. The Sultan spent the day, as usual, in regulating the affairs of his kingdom; and on the approach of night, retired with Scheherazade to his apartment. The next morning, before the day appeared, Dinarzade did not fail to address her sister: “My dear sister,” she said, “if you are not asleep, I entreat you, before the morning breaks, to continue your story.”

The Sultan did not wait for Scheherazade to ask permission, but said, “Finish the tale of the Genie and the Merchant: I am curious to hear the end of it.” Scheherazade immediately went on as follows: “Sir, when the merchant perceived that the Genie was about to slay him, he cried, ‘One word more, I entreat thee; have the goodness to grant me a little delay; give me only time to go and take leave of my wife and children, and divide my estate among them, as I have not yet made my will;—and when I have set my house in order, I promise to return to this spot, and submit myself to thee.’ ‘But if I grant thee the respite thou ask est,’ replied the Genie, ‘I fear thou wilt not return.’ ‘I swear by the God of heaven and earth, that I will not fail to repair hither.’ ‘What length of time requirest thou?’ said the Genie: ‘It will take me a full year to arrange every thing. But I promise thee, that after twelve months have passed thou shalt find me under these trees, waiting to deliver myself into thy hands.’ On this, the Genie left him near the fountain, and immediately disappeared.

“The merchant, having recovered from his fright, mounted his horse, and continued his journey. But if, on the one hand, he rejoiced at escaping for the moment from a great present peril, he was, on the other, much distressed, when he recollected the fatal oath he had taken. On his arrival at home, his wife and family received him with signs of the greatest joy; but instead of returning their embraces, he wept so bitterly, that they supposed something very extraordinary had happened. His wife inquired the cause of his tears, and of his violent grief.

‘We were rejoicing,’ she said, ‘at your return, and you alarm us all by the state of mind we see you in; I entreat you to explain the cause of your sorrow.’ ‘Alas!’ he replied, ‘How should I feel cheerful, when I have only a year to live?’ He then related to them what had passed, and that he had given his word to return, and at the end of a year, to submit to his death.

“When they heard this melancholy tale, they were in despair. The wife uttered the most lamentable groans, tearing her hair, and beating her breast; the children made the house resound with their grief; while the father mingled his tears with theirs. “The next day, the merchant began to settle his affairs, and first of all to pay his debts. He made many presents to his different friends, and large donations to the poor. He set at liberty many of his slaves of both sexes; divided his property among his children; appointed guardians for those of tender age; to his wife he returned all the fortune she brought him, and added as much more as the law would permit.

“The year soon passed away, and he was compelled to depart. He took in his wallet his graveclothes; but when he attempted to take leave of his wife and children, his grief quite overcame him. They could not bear his loss, and almost resolved to accompany him, and all perish together. Compelled at length to tear himself away, he addressed them in these words:—‘In leaving you, my children, I obey the command of God; imitate me, and submit with fortitude to this necessity. Remember, that to die is the inevitable destiny of man.’

Having said this, he snatched himself away from them, and set out. He arrived at the destined spot on the very day he had promised. He got off his horse, and, seating himself by the side of the fountain, with such sorrowful sensations as may easily be imagined, waited the arrival of the Genie. “While he was kept in this cruel suspense, there appeared an old man leading a hind, who came near to him. When they had saluted each other, the old man said, ‘May I ask of you, brother, what brought you to this desert place, which is so full of evil genii, that there is no safety? From the appearance of these trees, one might suppose this spot was inhabited; but it is, in fact, a solitude, where to tarry is dangerous.’

“The merchant satisfied the old man’s curiosity, and related his adventure. The old man listened with astonishment to the account, and when it was ended, he said, ‘Surely nothing in the world can be more surprising; and you have kept your oath inviolate! In truth I should like to be a witness to your interview with the Genie.’ Having said this, he sat down near the merchant, and while they were talking, another old man followed by two black dogs, appeared. As soon as he was near enough, he saluted them, and inquired the reason of their stay in that place. The first old man related the adventure of the merchant, exactly as the other had told it; and added, that this was the appointed day, and therefore he was determined to remain, to see the event.

“The second old man, who also thought it very curious, resolved to stay likewise; and sitting down, joined in the conversation. He was hardly seated, when a third arrived, and addressing himself to the other two, asked why the merchant, who was with them, appeared so melancholy. They related the cause, which seemed to the new comer so wonderful, that he also resolved to be witness to what passed between the Genie and the merchant. He therefore sat down with them for this purpose. “They quickly perceived, towards the plain, a thick vapour or smoke, like a column of dust, raised by the wind. This vapour approached them; and on its sudden disappearance, they saw the Genie, who, without noticing them, went towards the merchant, with his scimitar in his hand; and taking him by the arm, cried, ‘Get up, that I may kill thee, as thou hast slain my son.’ The merchant and the three old men were so horrified that they began to weep, and filled the air with their lamentations.

“When the old man, who led the hind, saw the Genie lay hold of the merchant, and about to murder him without mercy, he threw himself at the monster’s feet, and kissing them, said, ‘Prince of the Genii, I humbly entreat you to abate your rage, and do me the favour to listen to me. I wish to relate my own history, and that of the hind, which you see here! and if you find it more wonderful and surprising than the adventure of this merchant, whose life you wish to take, may I not hope, that you will at least remit a third part of the punishment of this unfortunate man?”—After meditating for some time, the Genie answered, ‘Good, I agree to it.’ ”

Voltaire quotes on liberty, tolerance, virtue, God and more

2011-09-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

Voltaire quotes on liberty, tolerance, virtue, God and more. Voltaire's God is the God that market the transition to posthumanism.

"All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God. "

"Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world. "

"It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything. "

"If God did not exist, he would have to be invented."

"But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it. "

"All of the other people have committed crimes, the Jews are the only ones who have boasted about committing them. They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race. "

"All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence. "

"What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature. "

"Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health. "

"It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. "

"The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him. Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he must do it, the thing being done without your praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is then to distrust him; or the thing is unjust, and then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, he knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit another crime by requesting what is undeserved."

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. "

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. "

"Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel. "

"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game. "

"Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest. "

"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination. "

"God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best. "

"God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. "

"History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes. "

"God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. "

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. "

"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. "

"What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking. "

"What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking. "

"Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. "

"The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in. "

"Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. "

Denis Diderot quotes: atheism, morality and more

2011-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Denis Diderot quotes on atheism, morality, freedom, state-affairs, human relationships and more:

“Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.”

“There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.”

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”

“If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.”

“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge. . . observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.”

“The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers”

“Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.”

“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”

“Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy”

“In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.”

“To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!”

“No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.”

“It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all”

“It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.”

“Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey”

“Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man / it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.”

“The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort.”

“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”

“The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.”

“Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.”

“When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.”

Albert Camus quotes: The Stranger

2011-09-28T05:39:00.000-07:00

Albert Camus and the absurd: Mersault is derived from the Myth of Sisyphus, and with some imagination can be related to Dr. Rieux (The Plague) and better yet, to Dostoevsky's Kirillov from Demons (The Possessed). The absurd man is a free man, he has no remorse in the face of death, no belief in God, and yet he still is a rightful man, an amoral man in an immoral world.

Quotes from Albert Camus's The Stranger:

“I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”

“I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”

“There is not love of life without despair about life.”

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”

“I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn t done that. I hadn t done this thing and I had done another. And so? ”

“Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.”

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

“I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”

“What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”

“Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.”

“Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.”

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

“I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”

“What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”

“Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.”

Vladimir Nabokov quotes: Lolita

2011-09-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

Ah, Nabokov being one of my favorite writers, it gives me great pleasure to write down some quotes from Lolita; life, art, both human and artist's condition, sex and ecstasy, it's all here - Vladimir Nabokov quotes from Lolita:

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight."

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."

"And the rest is rust and stardust."

"He broke my heart. You merely broke my life."

"Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece"

"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."

"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

"We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives."

"All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so."

"Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is."

"And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears."

“We all have such fateful objects -- it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another -- carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break.”

“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person, the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We could prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.”

“We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.”

“Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after. ”

“You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.”

“And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain. Once, in a sunset-ending street of Beardsley, she turned to little Eva Rosen (I was taking both nymphets to a concert and walking behind them so close as almost to touch them with my person), she turned to Eva, and so very serenely and seriously, in answer to something the other had said about its being better to die than hear Milton Pinski; some local schoolboy she knew, talk about music, my Lolita remarked:
'You know what's so dreadful about dying is that you're completely on your own'; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions...”

“She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.”

“There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.”

“In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.”

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”

“I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust”

To be continued

Salman Rushdie quotes: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

2011-09-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

A small selection of quotes from Salman Rushdie's out of this world (literary) novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet:

"Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey-castle sequence of bumpings-into and tumblings-apart."

"Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end."

"We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny."

"A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second."

"I want more than what I want."

"Music, love, death. Certainly a triangle of sorts; maybe even an eternal one."

"The only people who can see the whole picture, he murmured, are the ones who step out of the frame."

"But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?"

"In spite of all evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance plays a great part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning. But we live on a broken mirror, and fresh cracks appear in its surface every day."

"My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again."

To be continued

Sisiphus and the Book

2011-09-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

I ask what I ask. The absurdity resembles a sort of camusian frame of existence, no Stranger or The Plague, maybe Sisyphus, I don’t really know. A certain relationship between Self and Image occurs in the transitory state of being, or better yet, of becoming, in one’s life. The Self and Image of the Self are reflected-revealed by other ontological worlds, i.e. a book, a painting or a movie, in a way in which the ephemeral individual is one with the whole.

A book will show you that you're in fact a Sisyphus, yet he'll be recommended as a winner, which in fact he is, a winner due to the fact that he conquered the normal man’s transcendal needs, exposing the absurdity of Existence.

The sparrow in "Cosmos" - Witold Gombrowicz

2011-09-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

From the first chapter of Witold Gombrowicz's greatly appreciated novel - Cosmos:"But here I was in the hallway of a strange house, in the dead of night, in just my pants and shirt—this peeked at sensuality, it was like slithering toward Katasia with the same slipperiness as her lip . . . where was she sleeping? Sleeping? As soon as I asked myself that, I became someone walking toward her in the night, down the hallway, barefoot, in just my shirt and pants, the tiny, just-a-tad twirl-up of her lip, slippery and reptilian, together with my cold and disagreeable rejection and estrangement from those I had left behind in Warsaw, drove me coldly toward her swinish lust which, somewhere here, in this sleeping house . . .Where was she sleeping? I took a few steps, reached the stairs and looked out the little window, the only one in the hallway, it looked out from the other side of the house, the one opposite the road and the sparrow, onto a wide space surrounded by a wall and lit by swarms and multitudes of stars; here was a similar little garden with gravel footpaths and frail little trees, passing farther on into a vacant lot with a pile of bricks and a small shed . . . To the left, next to the house, was an addition, probably the kitchen, the laundry, maybe it was there that Katasia rocked to sleep the frolic of her little mouth . . . Moonless star-filled sky—stupendous—constellations emerged out of the swarms of stars, some I knew, the Big Dipper, the Great Bear, I was identifying them, but others, unfamiliar to me, were also lurking there, as if inscribed into the distribution of the major stars, I tried to fill in lines that might bind them into forms . . . and this deciphering, this charting, suddenly wearied me, I switched to the little garden, but here too the multiplicity of objects such as a chimney, a pipe, the angle of a gutter, the cornice of a wall, a small tree, as well as their more involved combinations like the turn and disappearance of the path, the rhythm of shadows, soon wearied me . . . yet I would begin anew, though reluctantly, to look for forms, patterns, I no longer felt like it, I was bored and impatient and cranky, until I realized that what riveted me to these objects, how shall I put it, what attracted me to the “behind,” the “beyond,” was the way that one object was “behind” the other, that the pipe was behind the chimney, the wall was behind the corner of thekitchen, just like . . . like . . . like . . . at supper when Katasia’s lips were behind Lena’s little mouth when Katasia moved the ashtray with the wire mesh while leaning over Lena, lowering her slithering lips close to . . .

I was more surprised than I should have been, at this point I was inclined to exaggerate everything, and besides, the constellations, the Big Dipper, etc., amounted to something cerebral, exhausting, and I thought “what? mouths, together?” I was particularly astonished by the fact that both their mouths were now, in my imagination, in my memory, more closely linked together than then, at the table, I tried to clear my head by shaking it, but that made the connection of Lena’s lips with Katasia’s lips even more clear-cut, so I smirked, because truly, Katasia’s twirled-up lasciviousness, her slipping into swinish lust had nothing, absolutely nothing in common with the fresh parting and innocent closing of Lena’s lips, it’s just that one was “in relation to the other”—as on a map, where one city is in relation to another city—anyway, the idea of maps had entered my head, a map of the sky, or an ordinary map with cities, etc. The entire “connection” was not really a connection, merely one mouth considered in relation to another mouth, in the sense of distance, for example, of direction and position . . . nothing more . . . but, while I now estimated that Katasia’s mouth was most likely somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen (she slept thereabouts), in fact I wondered where, in what direction, and at what distance was it from Lena’s little mouth. And my coldly-lustful striving in the hallway toward Katasia underwent a dislocation because of Lena’s incidental intrusion. And this was accompanied by increasing distraction. Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us. And I, gazing at the little garden, at the sky, at the “beyond” duality of the two mouths, I knew, I knew that something was eluding me . . . something important . . . Fuks! Where was Fuks? Was he “playing detective”? I hoped this wouldn’t end in a big mess! I was disgruntled about having rented a room with this fish-like Fuks whom I hardly knew . . . but there, ahead of me was the little garden, the trees, the footpaths passing into a field with a pile of bricks and all the way on to a wall that was incredibly white, but this time it all appeared as a visible sign of something that I could not see, namely the other side of the house, where there also was a bit of a garden, then the fence, the road, and beyond it the thicket . . . and within me the tension of starlight merged with the tension of the hanged bird.Was Fuks there, by the sparrow?"

Announcement - book fragments, scraps and more

2011-09-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so for now on along side short fiction stories I'll also publish scenes/fragments/scraps from the books that I like, i.e. long fiction and so on. That's all

Hey you - John Fiction

2011-05-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

Another short story written by me and posted on my personal short stories blog. It's a kind of ultra-short fiction story, in an postmodern approach.
Hey you by John Fiction:

“Hey you,” I thought as I was waving my hand goodbye. But no sense of remorse took over me as I saw her leave. Her little pinkish scarf was drifting beside her medium curly red-hair as he walked to the car.

As I reach into my pocket and touch the key to her apartment that she had forgot last night on the kitchen table, the faltering clouds gather in a sort of ludicus un-human play. The big cloud soon covered the rest, just as the dominating person in a relation tends to eclipse the other. The other turns into the next, and the next into the rule. The rule is: even if they leave a key, you’ll never see them again.

The mere thought of running after her made me regret ever leaving the house that day. I almost dropped the cigarette I didn’t even know I had in my left hand.

One smoke, than it’s poof-goodbye, I start a seriously-sickening-flight-over-the-street, planting ash over the pedestrians’ heads. As I drift over Anne I notice my shoe lace is untied. I bend to tie them and hit my head against the now-near-me concrete sidewalk. I notice her car is gone...

The blue damn think - John Fiction

2011-05-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

A very short story writen by me some time ago and posted a little while ago on my personal short stories blog. Here goes The blue damn think by John Fiction, hope you like it:

It just so happened that I’ve been thinking about that little blue damn thing for a few days now. The sun was rising, the coffee boiling and other cinematic elements occurred, still I was unable to think straight for a single minute. Why was I thinking about that damn blasted thing and how come it came to mind after all this time. Of course, first I thought it was just a bad misunderstanding that my brain didn’t want to elude because all the recent events that have been trembling with my peaceful, quite life.

Descriptive as it may seem, the blue damn think is something like a topaz, only a little darker and much more elusive, its contours are undetermined in a way in which it seems endless and nothingness together.

Doorbell rings. It’s my mail. I’ve always wondered my sometimes the mailman comes to my door like most of the time he leaves the mail in the box, or I sometimes find it half torn on the buildings entry hall. No express, no nothing, but he still rings that awful-sound-ring-a-ding doorbell: bills, bills, and a letter. The envelope was blue. The tip of my fingers started to sweat and bits of the blue color soon merged with my skin.

I haven’t finished the second sentence when all of a sudden the room started to spin and twirl, and without knowing how I landed on a chair, next to a coffee table. I could still hear the coffee boiling, I was thinking that it was going to evaporate and I had to make some again. I placed the letter on the table and started to gaze at my hands. They were shaking. My eyes only perceived a blurry image and added to this was the trembling of my blue-tipped-hands, the sensations was almost tripping. I calmly placed my hands on the arms of the chair, and then it hit me:

I couldn’t remember what was the blue-damn-thing.

The Dead Time (II) - J.G. Ballard

2011-05-07T02:51:00.000-07:00

Part two of the short story The Dead Time by J.G. Ballard:

"At the same time the absence, with few exceptions, of any wounds or violence suggested one or two unsettling alternatives plague, perhaps, or some sudden epidemic. Steering the truck with one hand and eating my rice with the other, I eased my foot off the heavy accelerator, opening the interval slightly between Hodson and myself. But for all this I was hardly concerned about the bodies. Too many people had already died in and around our camp. The business of loading the corpses into the trucks had placed a certain mental distance between them and myself. Handling all those bodies, pulling on the stiffening arms and legs, pushing their buttocks and shoulders over the tailgates, had been like an extended wrestling match with a party of strangers, a kind of forced intimacy that absolved me from all future contact or obligation.

An hour after leaving the stadium, when we had covered some ten miles, Hodson began to slow down, his truck bumping over the rutted road surface at little more than walking pace. Some half a mile from the river, we had entered a landscape flooded by a slack, brown water. Untended canals and drowned paddies stretched away on all sides, and the road had become little more than a series of narrow causeways. The vanished peasants had built their burial mounds into the shoulders of the road, and the ends of the cheap coffins protruded like drawers from the rain-washed earth, lockers ransacked by the passing war. Across the paddies I could see a boom of scuttled freighters that blocked the river, funnels and bridge-houses emerging from the swollen tide. We passed another abandoned village, and then the green shell of a reconnaissance aircraft shot down by the Americans.

Ten feet in front of me, Hodson's truck bumped along the roadway, the heads of his corpses nodding vigorously like sleepers assenting in some shared dream. Then Hodson stopped and jumped down from his cabin. He laid the map across the bonnet of my truck, then pointed along the broad canal we had been following for the past ten minutes. 'We've got to cross this before we reach the main road. Somewhere up ahead there's a sluice-bridge. It looks too small to have been bombed.' With his strong hands he began to tear away the stickers pasted to the fenders and windshield of my truck. Though gaunt and undernourished, he looked strong and aggressive. The experience of driving a vehicle again had clearly restored his confidence. I could see that he had been helping himself liberally to his bottle of saki. He bent down under the tail-gate of his truck and felt the left inside tyre. I had noticed the vehicle tilting when we first reached the canal.

'Going soft - no damn spares either.' He stood up and gazed into the rear of the truck, and with a single sweep of one arm flung back the tarpaulin, like a customs official exposing a suspicious cargo. Nodding to himself, he stared at the bodies piled across each other. 'Right, we rest here and finish the food, then find this bridge. First, let's make things easier for ourselves.' Before I could speak he had reached into the truck and seized one of the corpses by the shoulders. He jerked it away from its companions and hurled it head-first into the canal. That of a freckle-skinned man in his early thirties, it surfaced within a few seconds in the brown water and slowly drifted away past the reeds. 'Right, we'll have the nun next.' As he hauled her out he shouted over his shoulder, 'You get on with yours. Leave a few behind just in case.' Ten minutes later, as we sat with our bottles of saki on the bank of the canal, some twenty of the corpses were in the water, moving slowly away from us in the sluggish current. Pulling them down had almost exhausted me, but the first sips of the saki bolted through my bloodstream, almost as intoxicating as the boiled rice I had eaten. The brusque way in which we had ridded ourselves of our passengers no longer unsettled me - though, curiously, as I stood by the tail-gate pulling the bodies on to the ground I had found myself making some kind of selection. I had kept back the three children and a middle-aged woman who might have been their mother, and thrown into the water the Chinese couple and the elderly woman with the jaw-wound.

However, all this meant nothing. What mattered was to reach my parents. It was clear to me that the Japanese had not been serious about our delivering the bodies to the Protestant cemetery at Soochow - the two nuns exposed this as no more than a ruse, relieving them of some local embarrassment before the Americans landed at the airfield. Hodson was asleep beside his truck. His saki bottle followed the corpses down the canal. After throwing a few stones at it, I passed the next hour watching the vapour trails of the American aircraft and thinking with increasing optimism about the future, and about seeing my parents and sister later that afternoon. We would move back to our house in the French concession. My father would re-open his brokerage business, and no doubt train me as his assistant. After years of war and privation, Shanghai would be a boom city again... everything would once again return to normal. This pleasant reverie sustained me, when Hodson had woken blearily and clambered back into his cabin, as we set off in our lightened trucks. I was beginning to feel hungry again, and regretted eating all my rice, particularly as Hodson had thrown his into the canal. But then I heard Hodson shout something back to me. He was pointing to the sluicebridge a hundred yards in front of us.

When we reached it we found that we were not the only ones hoping to make the crossing. Parked on the approaches to the bridge, its light machine-gun unguarded, was a camouflaged Japanese patrol car. As we stopped, the three-man crew had climbed on to the bridge and were trying to close the gates that would carry us across. Seeing us arrive, the sergeant in charge walked over to us, scanning the few stickers Hodson had not torn from our trucks. We stepped down from the cabins, waiting as the sergeant inspected our cargoes without comment. He spoke a few words in Japanese to Hodson, and beckoned us over to the bridge.As we looked down at the sluices, we could see immediately what had blocked the bridges and prevented the gates from closing. Humped together against the vents were well over a dozen of the corpses that Hodson and I had pitched into the canal an hour earlier. They lay together like mattresses, arms and legs across each other, some face down, others staring at the sky.

To my shock I realized that I recognized each of them. That presentiment of death - though not my own nor of these drowned creatures - which I had felt so often during the past days returned to me, and I looked round at Hodson and the three Japanese as if expecting them immediately to fulfil this unconscious need.
'Well, what do they want?' Hodson was arguing aggressively with the Japanese sergeant, who for some reason was shouting at me in a suddenly high-pitched voice. Perhaps he realized that I might respond to his instructions for reasons of my own. I looked at his face and angular shoulders, wrists that were little more than sticks, well aware that he was as hungry as myself.
'I think they want us to get them out,' I said to Hodson. 'Otherwise, we can't get across. They know we threw them into the water.'
'For God's sake...' Exasperated, Hodson pushed past the Japanese and clambered down the bank of the canal. Waistdeep among the corpses, he began to sort them out with his strong arms. 'Aren't they going to help?' he called up in an aggrieved way when the Japanese made no effort to move.

Needless to say, Hodson and I were obliged to lift the bodies out ourselves. They lay on the bank like a party of exhausted bathers, in a strange way almost refreshed by their journey down the canal. The blood had been washed from the jaw-wound of the elderly woman, and I could see for the first time the image of a distinct personality. The sunlight lit the line of moist faces, illuminating the exposed hands and ankles.
'Well, we can get across now.' Looking down at his drenched trousers as the Japanese closed the sluice-gates, Hodson said to me 'Let's get on with it. We'll leave them here.'
I was staring at the face of the elderly woman, visualizing her talking to me, perhaps about her childhood in England or her long missionary years in Tientsin. Beside her the washed robes of the young nun had an almost spectral blackness, which gave her white hands and face an extraordinary glow. I was about to join Hodson when I noticed that the Japanese were also gazing at the bodies. All I could see was their intense hunger, as if they were eager to become my passengers.

'I think we should put them back on the trucks,' I said to Hodson. Fortunately, before he could remonstrate with me the sergeant had come over to us, beckoning us to work with his pistol. Hodson helped me to load the first ten bodies on to the back of my truck. Then, unable to contain his anger any more, he seized the bottle of saki from the cabin, pushed past the Japanese and climbed into his truck. Shouting something at me, he drove on to the bridge and set off along the opposite bank of the canal. For the next half hour I continued to load my vehicle, pausing to rest for a few minutes after I had carefully stowed each of the bodies. The effort of dragging them up the bank and lifting them into the truck almost exhausted me, and when I had finished I sat numbly for ten minutes behind my steering wheel. As I started the engine and drove on to the bridge with my heavy cargo the Japanese watched me without comment.

Fortunately, my anger at Hodson soon revived me. I clenched the wheel tightly in both hands, forehead touching the windshield, as the overladen vehicle lumbered down the uneven canal road. To have taken my saki mattered nothing, but to leave me with more than my fair share of corpses, without a map in this water-logged maze... Within half a mile of leaving the Japanese I was tempted to stop and heave a dozen of the bodies - I had the clearest picture in my mind of those who were Hodson's rather than my own - back into the water. Only the nun and the elderly woman I would allow on board. But I knew that once I stopped I would lose all hope of catching up with Hodson. Ahead of me, above the fields of uncropped sugar-cane, I could see the poles and straggling telegraph wire that marked one of the main roads to Shanghai. I pressed on towards it, the vehicle rolling from side to side on the earth track. Behind me the bodies were sliding about as if in some huge scrimmage, their heads banging the sides of the truck. It was now a short period after noon, and a potent but not altogether unpleasant stench had filled the cabin. In spite of its obvious source, it seemed in some way to be refracted and amplified by the odours of my own body, almost as if my hunger and exhaustion were acting as the catalyst for the process of putrefaction. A plague of flies had descended on the truck, and covered the outer surface of the rear window behind my head, so that I was unable to see if the Japanese were following me in their scout car. I could still see the profound sense of loss in their eyes as they had watched me leave, and I almost regretted that I had not taken them with me. Far from my being their prisoner, it was they who in some way belonged to the bodies lying behind me.

Before I could reach the main Shanghai road the radiator of the engine had boiled, and I wasted a full half an hour waiting for it to cool. In order to lighten the load on the engine, I decided to throw off Hodson's corpses. There was now no chance whatever of catching up with him, and he was almost certainly speeding through the suburbs of Shanghai for a first look at his garage. Somehow I would find my own way to my parents' camp. I climbed on to the back of--the truck, and clambered among the bodies piled together. Gazing down at the yellowing faces between my feet, I realized that I recognized almost all of them - the nuns and the Chinese couple, the elderly woman and the three children, a slim young man of my own age with an amputated left hand, a pregnant woman in her early twenties who vaguely resembled my sister. These belonged to my flock, whereas Hodson's intruders were as distinct and separate as the members of a rival clan. Their leader was clearly a small, elderly man with a barechested body like a grey monkey's, whose sharp eyes had seemed to follow me all day as I lifted him on and off the trucks.

I bent down to seize him by the shoulders, but for some reason my hands were unable to touch him. Once again I felt that presentiment of death I had sensed so many times, surrounding me on all sides, in the canal beside the road, in the fields of sugar-cane and the distant telegraph wires, even in the drone of an American aircraft crossing far overhead. Only I and the passengers aboard this truck were immune. I tried to pick up another of the corpses, but again my hands froze, and again I felt the same presentiment, an enclosing wall that enveloped us like the wire fence around our camp. I watched the flies swarm across my hands and over the faces of the bodies between my feet, relieved now that I would never again be forced to distinguish between us. I hurled the tarpaulin into the canal, so that the air could play over their faces as we sped along. When the engine of the truck had cooled I refilled the radiator with water from the canal, and set off towards the west.
It was without surprise, an hour later, that I came across Hodson's truck, and was able to make up the full complement of my passengers.

Where Hodson himself had gone I never discovered. Five miles down the Shanghai road, after two further delays to rest the engine, I found the truck abandoned by a Japanese road-block. In the afternoon haze the surface of the road seemed to be speckled with gold, nodes of bright light reflected from hundreds of spent cartridge cases. The Japanese here had fought a vigorous engagement, perhaps with some intruding patrol of Kuomintang troops. Webbing and empty ammunition boxes lay in the tank ditch dug across the road. Unable to drive around this obstacle, Hodson had presumably set off on foot. I stopped beside his abandoned truck, listening to the harsh beat of my engine in the deserted air. A hundred yards behind me a narrow lane led across a field of sugar-cane in a westerly direction, and with luck would carry me a little further on my circuit of Shanghai.

First, however, I had to take on my additional passengers. At the time, as I carried the dozen corpses from Hodson's truck and lifted them on to my own, it occurred to me more than once to give up the entire enterprise and set off on foot myself after Hodson. But as we turned off the road and rolled down the lane between the fields of sugarcane I felt a curious kind of comfort that we were all together, almost a sense of security at the presence of my 'family'. At the same time the urge to rid myself of them still remained, and given the opportunity - a lift, perhaps, in a passing Kuomintang vehicle - I would have left them at the first chance. But within this empty landscape they did at least provide an element of security, particularly if a hostile Japanese patrol came across me. Also, for the first time I had begun to feel a sense of loyalty towards them, and the feeling that they, the dead, were more living than the living who had deserted me.

The afternoon sun had begun to set. I woke in the cabin of the truck to find that I had fallen asleep beside a broad canal whose brown surface had turned almost carmine in the fading light. In front of me were the approaches to an empty village, the single-storey dwellings concealed by the dark fronds of the wild sugar-cane. All afternoon I had been lost in a golden world, following the sun as it moved away from me across the drowned paddies and silent villages. I was certain that I had covered some twenty miles - the apartment houses of the French concession were no longer visible along the horizon. My last attempt to free myself from the corpses took place that night. At dusk I stepped from the cabin of the truck and walked through the sugar-cane, breaking the stems and sucking the sweet pith. From the back of the truck the corpses watched me like a hostile chorus, their inclined heads slyly confiding in each other. I too at first resented this nourishment flowing through me, meagre though it was. As I revived, however, leaning against the radiator grille of the truck, I was suddenly tempted to release the handbrake and roll the vehicle forward into the blood-stained canal. As a result of committing myself to this lunatic troupe of passengers, ferrying them from the football stadium to some destination they had never agreed upon, I had lost the chance of seeing my parents that day.

Under the cover of darkness - for I would not have dared to commit this act by daylight - I returned to the truck and began to remove the bodies one by one, throwing them down on to the road. Clouds of flies festered around me, as if trying to warn me of the insanity of what I was doing. Exhausted, I pulled the bodies down like damp sacks, ruthlessly avoiding the faces of the nuns and the children, the young amputee and the elderly woman. At this point, when I had nearly destroyed everything I had been allowed by circumstances to achieve, I was saved by the arrival of a party of bandits. Armed American merchant seamen, renegade Kuomintang and quisling auxiliaries of the Japanese, they arrived by sampans and rapidly occupied the village. Too tired to run from them, I crouched behind the truck, watching these heavily armed men move towards me. For some reason, although I knew they would kill me, I had no sense whatever of that presentiment of death. At the last moment, when they were only twenty feet away, I lay down in the darkness among the circle of corpses, taking my position between the young nun and the elderly woman. The ferocious flight of the thousand flies came to a stop, and I could hear the heavy step of the bandits and the sounds of their weapons. Lying there in the darkness in the circle of the dead, I watched them halt and peer into the truck, arms raised across their mouths. Unable to approach us, they waited for a few minutes and then returned to the village. All night, as they roamed from house to house, kicking down the doors and breaking the furniture, I lay in the circle of corpses. Towards dawn two of the Kuomintang soldiers came and began to search the pockets of the dead. Staring at the sky, I listened to them panting beside me, and felt their hands on my thighs and buttocks.

At dawn, when they left in their motorized sampans, the flies returned. I stood up and watched the sun rising through the dark forests of sugar-cane. Waiting for its disc to touch me, I summoned my companions to their feet. From this time onwards, during the confused days of my journey to my parents' camp, I was completely identified with my companions. I no longer attempted to escape them. As we drove together through that landscape of war and its aftermath, past the endless canals and deserted villages, I was uncertain whether the events taking place spanned a few hours or many weeks. I was almost sure that by now the war should have been over, but the countryside remained empty, disturbed only by the sounds of the American aircraft overhead. For much of the time I followed the westerly course of the river, a distant presence which provided my only compass bearing. I drove carefully along the broken roads that divided the paddy-fields, anxious not to disturb my passengers lying together behind me. It was they who had saved me from the bandits. I knew that in a sense I was their representative, the instrument of the new order which I had been delegated by them to bring to the world. I knew that I now had to teach the living that my companions were not merely the dead, but the last of the dead, and that soon the whole planet would share in the new life which they had earned for us.

One small example of this understanding was that I no longer wished for food. I looked out from the cabin of the truck at the wide fields of sugar-cane beside the river, knowing that their harvest would no longer be needed, and that the land could be turned over to the demands of my companions. One afternoon, after a brief thunderstorm had driven the American aircraft from the sky, I reached the bank of the river. At some time a battle had been fought here among the wharfs and quays of a small Japanese naval air base. In the village behind the base there were shallow wells filled with rifles, and a pagoda housing a still intact anti-aircraft gun. All the villagers had fled, but to my amazement I found that I was not alone.

Seated side by side in a rickshaw that had been abandoned in the central square of the village were an elderly Chinese and a child of ten or so whom I took to be his granddaughter. At first glance they looked as if they had hired the rickshaw a few hours beforehand and ridden out here to view this small battlefield that I too was now visiting. I stopped my truck, stepped down from the cabin and walked over to them, looking around to see if their coolie was present. As I approached, the child climbed from the rickshaw and stood passively beside it. I could see now that, far from being a spectator, her grandfather had been seriously wounded in the battle. A large piece of shrapnel had driven through the side of the rickshaw into his hip. In Chinese I said to him, 'I'm making my way to the Soochow road. If you wish, you and your granddaughter are welcome to ride with my companions.' He made no reply, but I knew from his eyes that despite his injuries he had immediately recognized me, and understood that I was the harbinger of all that lay before him. For the first time I realized why I had seen so few Chinese during the past days. They had not gone away for ever, but were waiting for my return. I alone could repopulate their land.

Together the child and I walked down to the concrete ramp of the naval air base. In the deep water below the wharf lay the drowned forms of hundreds of cars rounded up from the allied nationals in Shanghai and dumped here by the Japanese. They rested on the river bed twenty feet below the surface, the elements of a past world that would never be able to reconstitute itself now that I and my companions, this child and her grandfather had taken possession of the land. Two days later we at last reached the approaches to my parents' camp. During our journey the child sat beside me in the cabin of the truck, while her grandfather rode comfortably with my companions. Although she complained of hunger to begin with, I patiently taught her that food was no longer necessary to us. Fortunately I was able to distract her by pointing out the different marks of American aircraft that crossed the sky.

After we reached the Soochow road the landscape was to change. Close to the Yangtse we had entered an area of old battlegrounds. On all sides the Chinese had emerged from their hiding places and were waiting for my arrival. They lay in the fields around their houses, legs stirring in the water that seeped across the paddy-fields. They watched from the embankments of the tank-ditches, from their burial mounds and from the doors of their ruined houses. Beside me the child slept fitfully on the seat. Free of any fear of embarrassing her, I stopped the truck and took off my ragged clothes, leaving only a crude bandage on my arm that covered a small wound. Naked, I knelt in front of the vehicle, raising my arms to my congregation in the fields around me, like a king assuming his crown at his coronation. Although still a virgin, I exposed my loins to the Chinese watching me as they lay quietly in the fields. With those loins I would seed the dead. Every fifty yards, as I approached the distant water-tower of my parents' camp, I stopped the truck and knelt naked in front of its boiling radiator. There was no sign of movement from the camp compound, and I was sure now what I would find there.

The child lay motionlessly in my arms. As I knelt with her in the centre of the road, wondering if it were time for her to join my companions, I noticed that her lips still moved. Without thinking, giving way to what then seemed a meaningless impulse, I tore a small shred of flesh from the wound on my arm and pressed it between her lips. Feeding her in this way, I walked with her towards the camp a few hundred yards away. The child stirred in my arms. Looking down I saw that her eyes had partly opened. Although unable to see me, she seemed aware of the movement of my stride. From the gates of the camp, on the roofs of the dormitory blocks, on the causeways of the paddy-fields beyond the wire, people were moving. Their figures were coming towards me, advancing waist-deep through the stunted sugarcane. Astonished, I pressed the child to my chest, aware of her mouthing my flesh. Standing naked a hundred yards from the truck, I counted a dozen, a score, then fifty of the internees, some with children behind them. At last, through this child and my body, the dead were coming to life, rising from their fields and doorways and coming to greet me. I saw my mother and father at the gates of the camp, and knew that I had given my death to them and so brought them into this world. Unharmed they had passed into the commonwealth of the living, and of the other living beyond the dead.

I knew now that the war was over."

The Dead Time (I) - J.G. Ballard

2011-05-06T02:45:00.000-07:00

The first part of the shorts fiction The Dead Time by J.G. Ballard:

"Without warning, as if trying to confuse us, the Japanese guarding our camp had vanished. I stood by the open gates of the camp with a group of fellow-internees, staring in an almost mesmerized way at the deserted road and at the untended canals and paddy-fields that stretched on all sides to the horizon. The guard-house had been abandoned. The two Japanese sentries who usually waved me away whenever I tried to sell them cigarettes had given up their posts and fled with the remainder of the military police to their barracks in Shanghai. The tyre-prints of their vehicles were still clearly visible in the dust between the gate-posts.
Perhaps even this hint at the presence of Japanese who had imprisoned us for three years was enough to deter us from crossing the line into the silent world outside the camp. We stood together in the gateway, trying to straighten our shabby clothing and listening to the children playing in the compound. Behind the nearest of the dormitory blocks several women were hanging out their morning's washing, as if fully content to begin another day's life in the camp. Yet everything was over!

Although the youngest of the group - I was then only twenty - on an impulse I casually stepped forward and walked into the centre of the road. The others watched me as I turned to face the camp. Clearly they half-expected a shot to ring out from somewhere. One of them, a consultant engineer who had known my parents before the war separated us, raised his hand as if to beckon me to safety. The faint drone of an American aircraft crossed the empty bank of the river half a mile away. It flew steadily towards us, no more than a hundred feet above the paddy-fields, the young pilot sitting forward over his controls as he peered down at us. Then he rolled his wings in a gesture of greeting and altered course for Shanghai.

Their confidence restored, the others were suddenly around me, laughing and shouting as they set off down the road. Six hundred yards away was a Chinese village, partly hidden by the eroded humps of the burial mounds built on the earth causeways that separated the paddies. Already substantial supplies of rice beer had been brought back to the camp. For all our caution, we were not the first of the internees to leave the camp. A week earlier, immediately after the news of the Japanese capitulation, a party of merchant seamen had climbed through the fence behind their block and walked the eight miles to Shanghai. There they had been picked up by the Japanese gendarmerie, held for two days and returned to the camp in a badly beaten state. So far all the others who had reached Shanghai - whether, like myself, searching for relations, or trying to check up on their businesses - had met with the same fate.

As we strode towards the village, now and then looking back at the curious perspectives of the camp receding behind us, I watched the paddies and canals on either side of the road. In spite of everything I had heard on the radio broadcasts, I was still not certain that the war was over. During the past year we had listened more or less openly to the various radios smuggled into the camp, and had followed the progress of the American forces across the Pacific. We had heard detailed accounts of the atom-bomb attacks - Nagasaki was little more than 500 miles from us - and of the Emperor's call for capitulation immediately after. But at our camp, eight miles to the east of Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtse, little had changed. Large numbers of American aircraft crossed the sky unopposed, no longer taking part in any offensive action, but we soon noticed that none had landed at the military airfield adjacent to our camp. Dwindling but still substantial numbers of Japanese troops held the landscape, patrolling the airfield perimeter, the railway lines and roads to Shanghai. Military police continued to guard the camp, as if guaranteeing our imprisonment through whatever peace might follow, and kept little more than their usual distance from the two thousand internees. Paradoxically, the one positive sign was that since the Emperor's broadcast no food had arrived for us.

Hunger, in fact, was my chief reason for leaving the camp. In the confusion after Pearl Harbor I had been separated from my parents by the Japanese occupation authorities and imprisoned in a stockade in the centre of Shanghai reserved for male allied nationals. Eighteen months later, when the American bombing began, the stockade was closed and the prisoners scattered at random among the cluster of large camps for families with children in the countryside surrounding Shanghai. My parents and young sister had spent the war in another of these some twenty miles to the west of the city. Although their condition was probably as bad as my own I was convinced that once I reached them everything would be well.
'It looks as if they're gone. They must have cleared out with everything overnight.'
At the entrance to the village the man next to me, a garage owner from Shanghai, pointed to the abandoned houses. Catching our breath after the brisk walk, we gazed down at the empty alleys and shuttered windows. Not a Chinese was in sight, though only the previous afternoon they had been doing a profitable trade with groups of internees from the camp, bartering rice beer for watches, shoes and fountain pens.
While the others conferred, I wandered away to the ruins of a ceramics factory on the outskirts of the village. Perhaps under the impression that its kilns were some sort of military installation, the Americans had bombed the factory again and again. A few of the buildings were still standing, but the courtyards were covered with thousands of pieces of broken crockery. Uncannily, these seemed to have been sorted out into various categories of table-ware. I walked across a carpet of porcelain soup spoons, all too aware of the fact that the only noise in this entire landscape was coming from my feet.

For the villagers to have left so suddenly, after all their struggles through the war, could only mean that they were frightened of something they were sure would take place in their immediate locality.
During the past year they had attached themselves to our camp, selling a few eggs through the barbed wire and later, when they themselves began to be hungry, trying to break through the fences in order to steal the tomatoes and root-crops which the internees grew on every square foot of vacant soil. At one time we had recruited the Japanese guards to help us strengthen the wire to keep out these pilferers. In the last months the circle of starving or ailing older villagers planted outside the camp gates - none were ever admitted, let alone fed - grew larger every day.
Yet for some reason they had all gone. As I walked back from the factory perimeter my companions were discussing the best route across the paddy-fields to Shanghai. They had ransacked several of the houses and were now sitting on the piles of broken crockery with bottles of rice beer. I remembered the rumours we had heard that before they surrendered the Japanese planned to slaughter their civilian prisoners.
I looked back along the road to the camp, aware of its curious confusion of vulnerability and security. The water-tower and three-storey concrete blocks seemed to rise from the lines of burial mounds. The camp had been a Chinese middle school. We had arrived after dark, and I had never seen it from the outside before, just as I had never physically entered the empty landscape surrounding the camp which had been an intimate part of my life all these years.

I listened to my companions' increasingly random discussion. Apart from the consultant engineer and the garage owner, there were two Australian seamen and a hotel barman. Already I was certain that they had no idea of the hazards facing them, and that as long as I remained with them I would never reach my parents. Their one intention was to get drunk in as many as possible of the dozens of villages between here and Shanghai.
Five minutes after I left them, however, as I walked back along the road to the camp, I heard the sounds of a Japanese military truck coming behind me from the village. Armed soldiers of the gendarmerie leaned on the cabin above the driver, guarding my five former companions who sat on the floor on either side of the tail-gate. Their faces had an ashen and toneless look, like those of men woken abruptly from sleep. Alone of them, an Australian seaman glanced up from his bound wrists and stared at me, as if failing to recognize who I was.
I continued to walk towards the camp, but the truck stopped in front of me. None of the soldiers spoke or even beckoned me to climb aboard, and already I knew that we were not being given a lift back to the camp.
Without thinking, I had a sudden presentiment of death, not of my own but of everyone else around me.
For the next three days we were held in the gendarmerie barracks attached to the military airfield, where some hundred or so allied aircrew shot down during the air attacks on Shanghai had been concentrated in an attempt to dissuade the American bombers from strafing the hangars and runways. To my relief, we were not mistreated. The Japanese sat around listlessly, no longer interested in us and gazing up in a melancholy way at the American aircraft which endlessly crossed the sky. Already supplies were being parachuted into our camp. From the window of our cell we could see the coloured canopies falling past the water-tower.
Clearly the war was over, and when a gendarmerie sergeant released us from the cell and ordered us into the barracks square I took for granted that we were about to be turned loose at the airfield gates. Instead, we were put aboard the same truck that had brought us here and driven under guard to the nearby railway station that served as a military depot on the ShanghaiNanking line.

The first to jump down from the truck, I looked around at the ruined station buildings, well aware that the last train had stopped here some two months beforehand. Apart from the aircraft overhead, the landscape remained as deserted as it had been on the day of our abortive escape. On all sides was the debris of war - rusting trucks, a paddy-field used as a dump for worn-out tyres, a line of tank ditches half-filled with water that ran towards a small football stadium set back from the road, a blockhouse covered with leaking sandbags built at the entrance to the station. But the Chinese had gone, vacating the landscape as if at last deciding to leave us to our own resources, to whatever pointless end we cared to make.
'It looks as if we're going to play soccer,' one of the Australian seamen called back to the others as he and I followed the three guards towards the stadium.
'Some stunt for the Red Cross,' someone else commented. 'Afterwards, make sure they take us back to the camp.'

But already I could see into the stadium, and had realized that whatever else took place, we would not be playing football. We climbed the concrete entrance tunnel into the ground, a circle of yellowing grass in the centre of which two trucks were parked. Sections of the empty stand had been used by the Japanese as a warehouse, and several soldiers patrolled the seats high above us, guarding what seemed to be a pile of looted furniture. A party of smartly uniformed military stood by the two trucks, waiting for us to approach. At their head was a young Eurasian interpreter in a white shirt.

As we walked towards them we looked down at the ground at our feet. Stretched out on the frayed grass were some fifty corpses, laid out in neat rows as if arranged with great care and devotion. All were fully dressed and lay with their feet towards us, arms at their sides, and I could see from the bright pallor of their faces that these people, whoever they were, had only recently died. I paused by a young nun wearing a full habit and wimple whose broad mouth had only just begun to take on its death grimace. Around her, like the members of her flock, were three children, heads to one side as if they had fallen asleep before death.
Watched by the Japanese soldiers and the young interpreter, and by the sentries guarding the furniture in the stands, we walked slowly past the corpses. Apart from two middle-aged Chinese, a man and a woman lying next to each other who might have been husband and wife, all were European and American, and from the worn state of their shoes and clothing seemed to be internees like ourselves. I passed a large ruddy-haired man in brown shorts with a gun-shot wound in his chest, and an elderly woman in a print dress who had been shot in the jaw, but at first sight none of the other bodies revealed any signs of violence.

Twenty feet ahead of me one of the Japanese soldiers by the trucks had moved his rifle. Behind me my companions stepped back involuntarily. The garage owner stumbled against me, for a moment holding my shoulder. I listened to the sound of an American aircraft overhead, the noise of its engine magnified by the concrete bowl of the stadium. It seemed insane that we would be shot here ten days after the war had ended in full view of our rescuers, but already I was convinced that we would not die. Yet again I had that same presentiment of death I had inexplicably felt before our arrest.

One of the Japanese officers, wearing full uniform under a short rain-cape, spoke briefly. I noticed that he was standing beside a small card-table on which rested two wicker baskets containing bottles of saki and parcels of boiled rice wrapped in leaves. For some bizarre reason I assumed that he was about to give me a prize.
The Eurasian in the white shirt came up to me. His face had the same passivity of the Japanese. No doubt he realized that once the Kuomintang forces arrived his own life would be over, like those of the fifty people lying on the stadium grass.
'You're all right?' he asked me. After a pause, he nodded at the Japanese officer. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, 'You can drive a truck?'
'Yes...' The presence of the armed Japanese made any other answer pointless. In fact I had not driven any vehicle since the outbreak of war, and before that only my father's Plymouth car.
'Of course we can.' The garage owner had pulled himself together and joined us. He looked back at our four companions, who were now separated from us by the tract of corpses. 'We can both drive, I'm an experienced mechanic. Who are all those people? What happened to them?'
'We need two drivers,' the interpreter said. 'You know the Protestant cemetery at Soochow?'
'No, but we can find it.'
'That's good. It's only sixty miles, four hours, then you can go free. You take these people to the Protestant cemetery.'
'All right.' The garage owner had again held my shoulder, this time to prevent me changing my mind, though I already had no intention of doing so. 'But who are they all?'
The interpreter seemed to have lost interest. Already the Japanese soldiers were lowering the tail-gates of the trucks. 'Various things,' he said, patting his white shirt. 'Some illnesses, the American planes..
An hour later we had loaded the fifty corpses on to the two trucks and after a trial circuit of the stadium had set off in the direction of Soochow.

Looking back on those first few hours of freedom as we drove together across the empty landscape fifteen miles to the south-east of Shanghai, I am struck by the extent to which we had already forgotten the passengers whose destination had made that freedom possible. Of course neither Hodson, the garage owner, nor myself had the slightest intention of driving to Soochow. As I could see from his manner as the six of us loaded the last of the corpses on to his truck, his one ambition was to turn right on the first road to Shanghai and abandon the truck and its contents in a side street - or, conceivably, given a sudden access of humanity, outside the Swiss embassy. In fact, my chief fear was that Hodson might leave me to be picked up by a Japanese patrol before I had mastered the truck's heavy steering and gear-box.

Luckily we had all been so exhausted by the effort of loading the bodies that the Japanese had not noticed my fumbling efforts to start and control the truck, and within half an hour I was able to keep a steady fifty yards behind Hodson. Both vehicles were plastered with military stickers pasted to the windshields and fenders, presumably assuring our passage through whatever Japanese units we might meet. Twice we passed a platoon sitting with its packs and rifles on the railway line, waiting for a train that would never come, but otherwise the landscape was deserted, not a single Chinese visible. Circumspectly, though, Hodson followed the route to Soochow marked on the road-map given to us by the Eurasian interpreter.

For myself, I was content to make this circuit of Shanghai, as I had no wish to drive the truck with its cargo of corpses through the centre of the city on my way to my parents' camp. Once I had cleared the western suburbs of the city I would turn north off the Soochow road, hand the vehicle over to the first allied command post - our new-found freedom had convinced me that the war would finally be over by the afternoon and complete the short journey to my parents' camp on foot.

The prospect of seeing them, after all these years, within literally a few hours made me feel light-headed. During the three days in the gendarmerie barracks we had been given almost nothing to eat, and I now picked at the boiled rice in the wicker basket on the seat beside me. Even the sight of the corpses whose feet and faces were shaking loose beneath the tarpaulin of Hodson's truck did nothing to spoil my appetite. As I had lifted the bodies on to the two trucks I had immediately noticed how wellfleshed most of them were, far better fed than any of us had been in our camp. Presumably they had been imprisoned in some special internment centre, and had unluckily fallen foul of the American air-attacks."

The Divining Stones - Yahya Haqqi

2011-05-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

Egyptian short-story writer and critic Yahya Haqqi won a scholarship to the Cairo School of Law, graduating in 1926. Soon after, he began a long and distinguished career in the diplomatic service, representing his country in several Middle Eastern and European capitals. Other than his own language, he was proficient in English, French, Italian, and Turkish. On the literary level, Haqqi is regarded as a pioneer of the short story in Egypt, which he began writing in 1923, but it was not until 1944 that he published his famous work, The Lamp of Um Hashim. The Divining Stones by Yahya Haqqi:

"I don’t believe in fortune-telling. I refuse even to consider it. I don’t understand how anyone can believe in those people who read the sands—people who, most of the time, simply draw the lines as they want to, as many as they want, and could just as easily make them foretell evil as the good fortune they claim to see. Then there are the cards. Just who laid down that the ace means a letter, the three a trip and the four a house? Who on earth decided all that? And what’s to stop their meaning changing just like that, so that, if the fortune-teller says you’re going to get a letter, it means you’ll be going on a trip; or, if she congratulates you on some money coming your way, she’s actually predicting your bankruptcy? I don’t see how the life of a human being can be linked up with the numbers on playing cards.

And worse still is the coffee cup. How can someone’s fortune, his very future even, be bound to a particular kind of coffee and how thick it is? A fortuneteller once told this man how she’d seen great turmoil in his cup. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “That coffee I’ve just drunk came from the Congo.” All this was going through my head as I sat on a low straw chair in front of the old Sudanese woman who spreads her stones near the enchanted fountain. I’d been visiting her every Saturday for a year—she didn’t spread them on Fridays. I’d learned from experience that the stones were lively and truthful in the early part of the week, not talking evasively or holding anything back. Later, though, and towards the end of the week especially, they’d get monotonous and irritable. You had the impression they were bored with words and tired out by people’s trivial concerns: all they’d see in front of them was a greedy man eager to get his hands on something he hadn’t earned, or a coward fearful of some imagined danger, or scheming women whose hearts are opened up, and—lo and behold—all their declared friendship to neighbors and acquaintances is actually bitter enmity and lasting hatred. Here’s what the old woman told me this time:
“A man and a woman,” she said, “are living happily together. But there’s a tall, dark woman coming to destroy their peace. In two somethings’ time you’ll receive a formal paper from the government. I see you in your home now. You’ll be getting some new furniture.”

I knew who the tall, dark woman was—Umm Mahmoud, the stupid, coarsegrained peddler woman who, not content with plunging my wife in debt, had developed a hold over her and started dragging her off on trips I knew nothing about. I’d warned my wife never to let the woman set foot in the house again, then pawned my watch and chain to pay back the debts. What about the paper, though—the one I was supposed to be getting from the government? Would it be a letter appointing me to the job I’d worn my shoes out trying to land? I hoped the two “somethings” would be two days, not two months or two years, God forbid!

As for the new furniture, the stones had certainly unearthed one of my fondest wishes, one I’d been hiding deep down inside me: I’d decided some time back that, within a month of getting a job, I’d buy a new mat and a new bed. The stones filled me with a sense of security, and I started believing in them more than before. If only, I thought, all those people who believed in coffee cups and cards and sand could give up their stupid beliefs and trust in divining stones!

Could there, after all, be a more graphic symbol of bustling, endlessly clashing humanity than the stones you could hear rattling in this woman’s hand? There, in front of you, were a man and a woman together; then they were separated by, say, a man who tempted the woman, and a dark woman who tempted the man. Wasn’t the whole problem of life summed up in that? As for this emerald green stone, didn’t it obviously denote wealth beyond one’s wildest dreams? The divining stones didn’t lie, and consulting them cost a mere twenty khurdas. If you picked up that sum in the street, you wouldn’t (as the fortune-teller pointed out) be ecstatic at what you’d found; but you had to consider what it bought you from the stones themselves.

When I got home, my wife came to help me take off my jacket.
“Didn’t I tell you,” I said, speaking slowly and calmly, “that Umm Mahmoud wasn’t to come in here?” To my astonishment she went pale with shock. Then she rushed out, opened the door onto the stairs, and started screaming down at our neighbor on the first floor.
“Hey, Sitt Asma,” she yelled. “Can’t you ever keep your mouth shut? Eh? Do you stand guard outside our door, or what?”
Then she poured out a stream of insults so bitter and venomous even I was surprised. And so the first part of the stones’ prophecy had been fulfilled. Now, I thought, let the second part come true, and quickly. Let the government send me the papers I’d been waiting for.

On the Monday a little boy came up.
“There’s a man downstairs,” he said. “Well-dressed. He wants to see you.” I went down, and there was a stranger with a bundle of papers under his arm and, in his hand, an ebony writing instrument fitter to write hieroglyphics than Arabic. My heart started pounding.
“What can I do for you?” I asked “I’m delivering a summons,” he said. “Will you put your signature or seal on this?”
“What is it?”
“A lawsuit filed by Sitt Asma, against you and your wife, for publicly insulting her. The case comes up next Thursday.”
As I climbed the stairs, the full force of the disaster struck me. I went in through my door ready for a blazing row.
“Well,” I said, “are you happy now? The two days have passed. The quarrel was the day before yesterday, two days ago exactly! By God, the stones were telling the truth, but it wasn’t the truth I’d been looking for!”
Next morning there was another quarrel between my wife and the neighbor. My blood boiled.
“Do you want to bring me a new lawsuit every two days?” I demanded.
“Don’t get so worked up, my darling,” she snapped back. “You’ll soon be seeing the back of me.”
She rushed out in a fury, and there I was. I’d wanted to prevent a suit that would have cost me fifty piasters, and instead I’d saddled myself with alimony, confiscation, and imprisonment; for, while I was out, two policemen burst into the house, along with some of my wife’s relatives and four porters, and carried off all the furniture. When I got back, I found totally bare walls—they hadn’t even left the pitcher. I stood there dumbstruck.
“Is that what the stones meant by new furniture?” I thought."

Translation by May Jayyusi and Christopher Ting

The Mailman - Tawfiq al-Hakim

2011-05-04T02:26:00.000-07:00

Famous Egyptian dramatist, novelist, and short-story writer Tawfiq al-Hakim was born in Alexandria and studied both in Alexandria and Cairo. When in Cairo, he discovered his love of theater and attended many performances by the most famous Egyptian actors of his day. He also studied at the Berlitz School in Cairo where he read a great amount of French literature. The Mailman by Tawfiq al-Hakim:

"It was by the seashore that I came across him: an odd fellow, carrying a bag just like those that mailmen use. His whole air was one of languor and stupidity—even the weary way he looked up at the sky put you in mind of an imbecile. He had the bearing of someone who was totally exhausted, at war with himself and the whole world. His vocabulary, I reckoned, would be exhausted after the single word “Ugh!” I went over to talk to him.
“If I’m not mistaken,” I said, “you’re a mailman on his day off.” He didn’t even bother to look up.
“Day off!” he retorted contemptuously, obviously trying to swallow his annoyance.
“Why not?” I said. “Don’t you get time off each week?”
“I’ve never had a day off in my life.”
“But how can the Post Office do that? Don’t they have a system for time off?”
“My dear sir, the Post Office doesn’t know what time off is.”
“What do you mean?”

“Just consider, my dear sir. I get up every morning at dawn, along with the birds, and grab my bag, which is stuffed to overflowing with as many letters as there are grains of sand. Every living man and woman on earth must have a letter in it, and I’m the one who’s supposed to do the rounds and give a letter to every one of them, all delivered to the proper place, till the day comes to an end. The bag has to be empty by then—so it can be filled up all over again next day, with fresh letters, all to be delivered once more, one by one, to the proper place. It just goes on and on, day after day; the people never go away and the bag’s never empty. In fact the only thing that ever gets exhausted is my patience. But what can I do? If I didn’t keep working, the letters would pile up, over two days, and then I’d really be in trouble.”

“But that’s incredible!” I said. “Doesn’t the Post Office have any other mailmen?”
“No. There’s only me. I am the Post Office.”
“How has that come about? Is it mismanagement or just plain negligence?”
“Don’t ask me. I keep complaining how overworked I am, but I might as well talk to thin air. As you can see, things have got so bad now I just don’t care any more.”
“But can you really deliver all those letters in one day?”
“I just deliver them at random. A person can only be expected to do so much. No one’s ever called me to account for any mistakes I’ve made—and I must have made a lot, of course. The main thing is, when I come back at the end of the day, there are never any letters left in my bag.”

As he spoke, he opened his bag, almost as though he’d just remembered it was still there. Looking inside, I saw he really did have a lot of letters.
“How are you going to get all those delivered?” I asked. “It’s already twelve o’clock.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll just do what I do every day.”

Close by was a fisherman, who hadn’t managed to catch anything since he started early that morning. The mailman thrust out his hand toward the man and shoved several dozen letters in his pocket. A moment later the fisherman, to his astonished delight, was hauling his net from the sea with a huge catch of fish inside, while another group of fishermen, a little way off, was still vainly trying to land a single fish. I pointed toward these other people.
“But what about them?” I asked.
“They’re too far away,” he said irritably, glancing in their direction. “I told you, I’m tired. Why should I have to go and give every one of them a letter? I’ve given theirs to this fisherman here.”
“Do you always treat people’s letters like that?”
“Of course I do. Do you think I’m stupid enough to strain my joints and get all out of breath chasing after every creature God put on this earth? If I don’t come across people, I give their letters to the ones I do happen to meet. That way I get a bit of rest, in God’s safe keeping!”

At that moment a peevish-looking old hag with a dreadful voice came by and, taking a lottery ticket from her pocket, yelled at the newspaper seller to check for her number in the paper. The way she kept bossing the poor man around made cursing and swearing sound polite. Meanwhile a whole bevy of lovely girls in bathing costumes came running along the sands behind her, waving their glistening arms. They had lottery tickets too and wanted to check their numbers. As the old hag approached the mailman, he took a thousand letters out of his bag and stuffed them in her pocket, and a moment later she found her ticket had won first prize, worth thousands of pounds. Her fearful voice rang out in a cry of triumph and victory and sheer joy! This was too much for me.
“Don’t you have any decency?” I exclaimed.
“Or if common justice means nothing to you, can’t you at least show a bit of sense? Look at that ugly old hag. She’s so repulsive she couldn’t make a grave laugh. How can you give her all that wealth, when there are all those gorgeous young girls just a few feet away, overflowing with energy and youth and full of the joys of life? Life’s one long happiness for them. Doesn’t just looking at them make you want to break into a smile?”

“Stop bothering me!” he replied, shoving me to one side. “If I had to tell the difference between spring and autumn, or say who’s ugly and who’s beautiful, or work out who deserves things and who doesn’t, I’d never get my day’s work done!”
“But doesn’t everyone have a letter with you? And doesn’t each man’s letter give him the same chance as his brother?”
“I told you,” he yelled, “I can only do so much! Show a bit of pity, can’t you? Isn’t there anyone, in heaven and earth, who’ll show me some pity, or at least some understanding? Up in heaven they keep telling me my negligence is making people furious with them. And here you are, down on earth, shouting how this person should get something and that one shouldn’t. I’m the one who ought to be complaining. I’ve been working so hard for so long, generation after generation, I can hardly see any more and my brain’s scrambled. Listen, all you dear people. My eyes are still just about capable, God be praised, of making you out, and I still hand out what’s in my bag, day after day. And that’s all I can do!

If I happen to meet someone, or they bump into me, I thrust my hand down in my bag, bring out whatever I can take hold of in my fingers, and give it to them. It’s all a matter of chance, according to what comes up. If I were to try and give every man the same share as his brother, I’d find my legs wouldn’t move fast enough. I’d break down. You can go on as long as you like, saying how I’m lazy, or unfair, or negligent, but you won’t change the way I do things. If people have complaints, they can yell them to the whole world for all I care—it won’t make a jot of difference. There have been more complaints about me than there are grains of sand on this beach.”

With that the “mailman” went off from the beach, leaving me to my reflections. Then the joyful shouts of the lucky fisherman and the old hag’s peals of laughter brought me back to reality. I ran after the fellow. “Hey,” I yelled, like a madman. “Mailman, wait! I forgot to ask you. Could I have some of your letters? Please? Dig me out a handful from your bag!” He’d vanished. I went and sat on the beach, burying my hand in the sand in sheer despair and biting my nails in my frustration. “What a fool I am!” I thought. “There was good fortune right next to me, his bag full to overflowing, ready to give me everything I needed. But no! I had to be all philosophical and forget about my practical interests. And that stopped fortune giving me anything. We wasted our time talking—and time was all I got. If I hadn’t kept pestering him with my ideas, he would have stretched his hand out to me, and I’d be another Rothschild, or Rockefeller, or Qarun!”"

Translation by Roger Allen and Christopher Tingley

Zelig - Benjamin Rosenblatt

2011-05-03T02:49:00.000-07:00

Zelig, a short story from 1915 by american author Benjamin Rosenblatt:

"Old Zelig was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent - "Mr:' "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing:' knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres:' For "to belong:' on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew must join ''A Society for Burying Its Members:' to be provided at least with a narrow cell at the end of the long road. Zelig was not even a member of one of these. ''Alone, like a stone:' his wife often sighed.

In the cloakshop where Zelig worked he stood daily, brandishing his heavy iron on the sizzling cloth, hardly ever glancing about him. The workmen despised him, for during a strike he returned to work after two days' absence. He could not be idle, and thought with dread of the Saturday that would bring him no pay envelope. His very appearance seemed alien to his brethren. His figure was tall, and of cast-iron mold. When he stared stupidly at something, he looked like a blind Samson. His gray hair was long, and it fell in disheveled curls on gigantic shoulders somewhat inclined to stoop. His shabby clothes hung loosely on him; and, both summer and winter, the same old cap covered his massive head. He had spent most of his life in a sequestered village in Litde Russia, where he tilled the soil and even wore the national peasant costume.

When his son and only child, a poor widower with a boy of twelve on his hands, emigrated to America, the father's heart bled. Yet he chose to stay in his native village at all hazards, and to die there. One day, how- ever, a letter arrived from the son that he was sick; this sad news was followed by words of a more cheerful nature - "and your grandson Moses goes to public school. He is almost an American; and he is not forced to forget the God of Israel. He will soon be confirmed. His Bar Mitsvah is near:' Zelig's wife wept three days and nights upon the receipt
of this letter. The old man said little; but he began to sell his few possessions.

To face the world outside his village spelled agony to the poor rustic. Still he thought he would get used to the new home which his son had chosen. But the strange journey with locomotive and steamship bewildered him dreadfully; and the clamor of the metropolis, into which he was flung pell-mell, altogether stupefied him. With a vacant air he regarded the Pandemonium, and a petrifaction of his inner being seemed to take place. He became "a barrel with a stave missing." No spark of animation visited his eye. Only one thought survived in his brain, and one desire pulsed in his heart: to save money enough for himself and family to hurry back to his native village. Blind and dead to everything, he moved about with a dumb, lacerating pain in his heart,
- he longed for home. Before he found steady employment, he walked daily with titanic strides through the entire length of Manhattan, while children and even adults often slunk into byways to let him pass. Like a huge monster he seemed, with an arrow in his vitals. In the shop where he found a job at last, the workmen feared him at first; but, ultimately finding him a harmless giant, they more than once hurled their sarcasms at his head. Of the many men and women employed there, only one person had the distinction of getting fellowship from old Zelig. That person was the Gentile watchman or janitor of the shop, a little blond Pole with an open mouth and frightened eyes. And many were the witticisms aimed at this uncouth pair. "The big one looks like an elephant:' the joker of the shop would say; "only he likes to be fed on pennies instead of peanuts:' "Oi, oi, his nose would betray him:' the "philosopher" of the shop chimed in; and during the dinner hour he would expatiate thus: "You see, money is his blood. He starves himself to have enough dollars to go back to his home; the Pole told me all about it. And why should he stay here? Freedom of religion means nothing to him, he never goes to synagogue; and freedom of the press? Bah - he never even reads the conservative Tageblatt!"

Old Zelig met such gibes with stoicism. Only rarely would he turn up the whites of his eyes, as if in the act of ejaculation; but he would soon contract his heavy brows into a scowl and emphasize the last with a heavy thump of his sizzling iron. When the frightful cry of the massacred Jews in Russia rang across the Atlantic, and the Ghetto of Manhattan paraded one day through the narrow streets draped in black, through the erstwhile clamorous thoroughfares steeped in silence, stores and shops bolted, a wail of anguish issuing from every door and window - the only one remaining in his shop that day was old Zelig. His fellow-workmen did not call upon him to join the procession. They felt the incongruity of "this brute" in line with mourners in muffled tread. And the Gentile watchman reported the next day that the moment the funeral dirge of the music echoed from a distant street, Zelig snatched off the greasy cap he always wore, and in confusion instantly put it on again. ''All the rest of the day;' the Pole related with awe, "he looked wilder than ever, and so thumped with his iron on the cloth that I feared the building would come down:'

But Zelig paid little heed to what was said about him. He dedicated his existence to the saving of his earnings, and only feared that he might be compelled to spend some of them. More than once his wife would be appalled in the dark of night by the silhouette of old Zelig in nightdress, sitting up in bed and counting a bundle of bank notes which he always replaced under his pillow. She frequently upbraided him for his niggardly nature, for his warding off all requests outside the pittance for household expense. She pleaded, exhorted, wailed. He invariably answered: "I haven't a cent by my soul:' She pointed to the bare walls, the broken furniture, their beggarly attire. "Our son is ill;' she moaned. "He needs special food and rest; and our grandson is no more a baby; he'll soon need money for his studies. Dark is my world; you are killing both of them." Zelig's color vanished; his old hands shook with emotion. The poor woman thought herself successful, but the next moment he would gasp: "Not a cent by my soul." One day old Zelig was called from his shop, because his son had a sudden severe attack; and, as he ascended the stairs of his home, a neighbor shouted: "Run for a doctor; the patient cannot be revived:' A voice as if from a tomb suddenly sounded in reply, "I haven't a cent by my soul."

The hallway was crowded with the ragged tenants of the house, mostly women and children; from far off were heard the rhythmic cries of the mother. The old man stood for a moment as if chilled from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers. Then the neighbors heard his sepulchral mumble: "I'll have to borrow somewheres, beg some one;' as he retreated down the stairs. He brought a physician; and when the grandson asked for money to go for the medicine, Zelig snatched the prescription and hurried away, still murmuring: "I'll have to borrow, I'll have to beg:' Late that night, the neighbors heard a wail issumg from old Zelig's apartment; and they understood that the son was no more. Zelig's purse was considerably thinned. He drew from it with palsied fingers for all burial expenses, looking about him in a dazed way. Mechanically he performed the Hebrew rites for the dead, which his neighbors taught him. He took a knife and made a deep gash in his shabby coat; then he removed his shoes, seated himself on the floor, and bowed his poor old head, tearless, benumbed. The shop stared when the old man appeared after the prescribed three days' absence. Even the Pole dared not come near him. A film seemed to coat his glaring eye; deep wrinkles contracted his features, and his muscular frame appeared to shrink even as one looked. Prom that day on, he began to starve himself more than ever. The passion for sailing back to Russia, "to die at home at last;' lost but little of its original intensity. Yet there was something now which by a feeble thread bound him to the New World.

In a little mound on the Base Achaim, the "House of Life;' under a tombstone engraved with old Hebrew script, a part of himself lay buried. But he kept his thoughts away from that mound. How long anduntiringly he kept on saving! Age gained on him with rapid strides. He had little strength left for work, but his dream of home seemed nearing its realization. Only a few more weeks, a few more months! And the thought sent a glow of warmth to his frozen frame. He would even condescend now to speak to his wife concerning the plans he had formed for their future welfare, more especially when she revived her pecuniary complaints. "See what you have made of us, of the poor child;' she often argued, pointing to the almost grown grandson. "Since he left school, he works for you, and what will be the end?" At this, Zelig's heart would suddenly clutch, as if conscious of some indistinct, remote fear. His answers touching the grandson were abrupt, incoherent, as of one who replies to a question unintelligible to him, and is in constant dread lest his interlocutor should detect it.

Bitter misgivings concerning the boy began to mingle with the reveries of the old man. At first, he hardly gave a thought to him. The boy grew noiselessly. The ever-surging tide of secular studies that runs so high on the East Side caught this boy in its wave. He was quietly preparing himself for college. In his eagerness to accumulate the required sum, Zelig paid little heed to what was going on around him; and now, on the point of victory, he became aware with growing dread of something abrewing out of the common. He sniffed suspiciously; and one evening he overheard the boy talking to grandma about his hatred of Russian despotism, about his determination to remain in the States. He ended by entreating her to plead with grandpa to promise him the money necessary for a college education. Old Zelig swooped down upon them with wild eyes. "Much you need it, you stupid;' he thundered at the youngster in unrestrained fury. "You will continue your studies in Russia, durak, stupid." His timid wife, however, seemed suddenly to gather courage and she exploded: "Yes, you should give your savings for the child's education here. Woe is me, in the Russian universities no Jewish children are taken:' Old Zelig's face grew purple. He rose, and abruptly seated himself again. Then he rushed madly, with a raised, menacing arm, at the boy in whom he saw the formidable foe - the foe he had so long been dreading.

But the old woman was quick to interpose with a piercing shriek: "You madman, Jook at the sick child; you forget from what our son died, going out like a flickering candle:' That night Zelig tossed feverishly on his bed. He could not sleep. For the first time, it dawned upon him what his wife meant by pointing to the sickly appearance of the child. When the boy's father died, the physician declared that the cause was tuberculosis. He rose to his feet. Beads of cold sweat glistened on his forehead, trickled down his cheeks, his beard. He stood pale and panting. Like a startling sound, the thought entered his mind - the boy, what should be done with the boy?

The dim, blue night gleamed in through the windows. All was shrouded in the city silence, which yet has a peculiar, monotonous ring in it. Somewhere, an infant awoke with a sickly cry which ended in a suffocating cough. The grizzled old man bestirred himself, and with hasty steps he tiptoed to the place where the boy lay. For a time he stood gazing on the pinched features, the under-sized body of the lad; then he raised one hand, passed it lightly over the boy's hair, stroking his cheeks and chin. The boy opened his eyes, looked for a moment at the shriveled form bending over him, then he petulantly closed them again. "You hate to look at granpa, he is your enemy, he?" The aged man's voice shook, and sounded like that of the child's awaking in the night. The boy made no answer; but the old man noticed how the frail body shook, how the tears rolled, washing the sunken cheeks. For some moments he stood mute, then his form literally shrank to that of a child's as he bent over the ear of the boy and whispered hoarsely: "You are weeping, eh? Granpa is your enemy, you stupid! Tomorrow I will give you the money for the college. You hate to look at granpa; he is your enemy, eh?"

From the Memoirs of Satan - Wilhelm Hauff

2011-05-02T06:10:00.000-07:00

A collection of devil tales: From the Memoirs of Satan by Wilhelm Hauff:

"In this way the jovial stranger had kept myself, and twelve or fifteen other gentlemen and ladies (our fellow guests), in a perpetual whirl of delight. Scarcely any had any special business to detain them at the hotel, and yet none ventured to entertain the mere idea of departure, even at a distant day. On the other hand, after we had slept for some time late on mornings, sat long at dinner, sung and played long of evenings, and drank, chatted, and laughed long of nights, the magic tie which bound us to this hotel seemed to have woven new chains around us. This intoxication, however, was soon to be put an end to, perhaps for our good. On the seventh day of our rejoicings, a Sunday, our friend Von Natas was not to be found anywhere. The waiters gave as his apology a short journey; he could not return before sunset, but would certainly be in time for tea and supper.

The enjoyment of his society had already become such a necessity, that this piece of information made us helpless and ill at ease. The conversation turned naturally on our absent friend and his striking, brilliant apparition among us. It was strange, but I could not get it out of my head that I had already met with him in my walk through life, but in a different shape; and, absurd as the idea was, it still forced itself irresistibly on my mind once and again. I called to mind, from years long gone by, the recollection of a man who in his whole demeanour, but more especially in his glance, had the greatest resemblance to him. The one of whom I now speak was a foreign physician, who occasionally visited my native town, and there lived at first in great retirement, though he soon found a crowd of worshippers collected around him. The thought of this man was always a melancholy one, for it was asserted that some serious misfortune always followed his visits; still I could not shake off the idea that Natas resembled him strikingly, in fact that he was one and the same person.

I mentioned to my next neighbour at table the idea that incessantly haunted me, and how unpleasant it was to identify so horrible a being as the stranger who had so afflicted my native city, with our mutual friend who had so fully gained my esteem and affection; but it will seem still more incredible when I assure my readers that all my neighbours were full of precisely the same idea, and that all fancied they had seen our agreeable companion in some entirely different shape. “You are enough to make one downright melancholy,” said Baroness von Thingen, who sat near me; “you make our friend Natas out to be the Wandering Jew, or God knows what more!”

A little old man, a professor in Tibsingen, who had joined our circle some days before, and passed his time in quiet, silent enjoyment, enlivened by an occasional deep conference with the Rhine wine, had kept smiling to himself during what he called our “comparative anatomy,” and twirling his huge snuff-box between his fingers with such skilful rapidity, that it revolved like a coachwheel. “I cannot longer refrain from a remark I wished to make,” exclaimed he at last. “Under your favour, gracious lady, I do not look upon him as being precisely the Wandering Jew, but still as being a very strange mortal. As long as he was present, the thought would, it is true, now and then flash up in my mind, ‘You have seen this man before, but pray where was it?’ but these recollections were driven away as if by magic whenever he fastened upon me those dark wandering eyes of his.”

“So was it with me—and with me—and with me,” exclaimed we all in astonishment.
“Hem! hem!” smiled the Professor. “Even now the scales seem to fall from my eyes, and I see that he is the very same person I saw in Stuttgart twelve years ago.”
“What, you have seen him then, and in what circumstances?” asked Lady von Thingen eagerly, and almost blushed at the eagerness she displayed.

The Professor took a pinch of snuff, shook the superfluous grains off his waistcoat, and answered—“It may be now about twelve years since I was forced by a law-suit to spend some months in Stuttgart. I lived at one of the best hotels, and generally dined with a large company at the table d’hôte. Once upon a time I made my first appearance at table after a lapse of several days, during which I had been forced to keep my room. The company were talking very eagerly about a certain Signor Barighi, who for some time past had been delighting the other visitors with his lively wit, and his fluency in all languages. All were unanimous in his praise, but they could not exactly agree as to his occupation; some making him out a diplomatist, others a teacher of languages, a third party a distinguished political exile, and a fourth a spy of the police. The door opened, all seemed silent, even confused, at having carried on the dispute in so loud a tone; I judged that the person spoken of must be among us, and saw—”
“Who, pray?”
“Under favour, the same person who has amused us so agreeably for some days past. There was nothing supernatural in this, to be sure, but listen a moment; for two days Signor Barighi, as the stranger was called, had given a new relish to our meals by his brilliant conversation, when mine host interrupted us suddenly—‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘prepare yourself for an unique entertainment which will be provided for you tomorrow.’

“We asked what this meant, and a grey headed captain, who had presided at the hotel table many years, informed us of the joke as follows—Exactly opposite this dining room, an old bachelor lives, solitary and alone, in a large deserted house; he is a retired Counsellor of State—lives on a handsome premium, and has an enormous fortune besides. He is, however, a downright fool, and has some of the strangest peculiarities; thus, for instance, he often gives himself entertainments on a scale of extravagant luxury. He orders covers for twelve, from the hotel, he has excellent wines in his cellar, and one or the other of our waiters has the honour to attend table. You think, perhaps, that at these feasts he feeds the hungry, and gives drink to the thirsty—no such thing; on the chairs lie old yellow leaves of parchment, from the family record, and the old hunks is as jovial as if he had the merriest set of fellows around him; he talks and laughs with them, and the whole thing is said to be so fearful to look upon, that the youngest waiters are always sent over, for whoever has been to one such supper will enter the deserted house no more.

“The day before yesterday he had a supper, and our new waiter, Frank, there, calls heaven and earth to witness that nobody shall ever induce him to go there a second time. The next day after the entertainment comes the Counsellor’s second freak. Early in the morning he leaves the city, and comes back the morning after; not, however, to his own house, which during this time is fast locked and bolted, but into this hotel. Here he treats people he has been in the habit of seeing for a whole year, as strangers; dines, and afterwards places himself at one of the windows, and examines his own house across the way from top to bottom. “‘Who does that house opposite belong to?’ he then asks the host.

“The other regularly bows and answers, ‘It belongs to the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency’s service.’”
“But, Professor,” here observed I, “what has this silly Hasentreffer of yours to do with our Natas?”
“A moment’s patience, Doctor,” answered the Professor, “the light will soon break in upon you. Hasentreffer then examines the house, and learns that it belongs to Hasentreffer. ‘Oh, what!’ he asks, ‘the same that was a student with me at Tibsingen’—then throws open the window, stretches his powdered head out, and calls out—‘Ha-asentreffer—Ha-asentreffer!’
“Of course no one answers, but he remarks: ‘The old fellow would never forgive me if I was not to look in on him for a moment,’ then takes up his hat and cane, unlocks his own house, goes in, and all goes on after as before.

“All of us,” the Professor proceeded in his story, “were greatly astonished at this singular story, and highly delighted at the idea of the next day’s merriment. Signor Barighi, however, obliged us to promise that we would not betray him, as he said he was preparing a capital joke to play off on the Counsellor. “We all met at the table d’hôte earlier than usual, and besieged the windows. An old tumble down carriage, drawn by two blind steeds, came crawling down the street; it stopped before the hotel. There’s Hasentreffer, there’s Hasentreffer, was echoed by every mouth; and we were filled with extravagant merriment when we saw the little man get out, neatly powdered, dressed in an iron grey surtout with a huge meerschaum in hand. An escort of at least ten servants followed him in, and in this guise he entered the diningroom. “We sat down at once. I have seldom laughed as much as I did then; for the old chap insisted, with the greatest coolness, that he came direct from Carrel, and that he had six days before been extremely well entertained at the Swan Inn at Frankfort. Barighi must have disappeared before the dessert, for when the Counsellor left the table, and the other guests, full of curiosity, imitated his example, Barighi was nowhere to be seen.

“The Counsellor took his seat at the window; we all followed his example and watched his movements. The house opposite seemed desolate and uninhabited. Grass grew on the threshold, the shutters were closed, and on some of them birds seemed to have built their nests.
“‘A fine house that, opposite,’ said the old man to our host, who kept standing behind him in the third position. ‘Who does it belong to?

“‘To the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency’s service.’
“‘Ah, indeed! that must be the same one that was a fellow-student with me,’ exclaimed he; ‘he would never forgive me if I was not to inform him that I was here.’ He opened the window,—‘Haasentreffer— Hasentreffer!’ cried he, in a hoarse voice.
But who can paint our terror, when opposite, in the empty house, which we knew was firmly locked and bolted, a window-shutter was slowly raised, a window opened, and out of it peered the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, in his chintz morning-gown and white nightcap, under which a few thin grey locks were visible; this, this exactly, was his usual morning costume. Down to the minutest wrinkle on the pallid visage, the figure across the street was precisely the same as the one that stood by our side. But a panic seized us, when the figure in the morning-gown called out across the street, in just the same hoarse voice, ‘What do you want? who are you calling to, hey?’ “‘Are you the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer?’ said the one on our side of the way, pale as death, in a trembling voice, and quaking as he leaned against the window for support. “‘I’m the man,’ squeaked the other, and nodded his head in a friendly way; ‘have you any commands for me?’ “‘But I’m the man too,’ said our friend mournfully, ‘how can it be possible?’

“‘You are mistaken, my dear friend,’ answered he across the way, ‘you are the thirteenth, be good enough just to step across the street to my house, and let me twist your neck for you! it is by no means painful.’

“‘Waiter! my hat and stick,’ said the Counsellor, pale as death, and his voice escaped in mournful tones from his hollow chest. ‘The devil is in my house and seeks my soul; a pleasant evening to you, gentlemen,’ added he, turning to us with a polite bow, and thereupon left the room. “‘What does this mean?’ we asked each other; ‘are we all beside ourselves?’

“The gentleman in the morning-gown kept looking quietly out of the window, while our good silly old friend crossed the street at his usual formal pace. At the front-door, he pulled a huge bunch of keys out of his pocket, unlocked the heavy creaking door—he of the morning-gown looking carelessly on, and walked in. “The latter now withdrew from the window, and we saw him go forward to meet our acquaintance at the room-door. “Our host and the ten waiters were all pale with fear, and trembled. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the former, ‘God pity poor Hasentreffer, for one of those two must be the devil in human shape.’

We laughed at our host, and tried to persuade ourselves that it was a joke of Barighi’s; but our host assured us that no one could have obtained access to the house except he was in possession of the Counsellor’s very artificially contrived keys; also, that Barighi was seated at table not ten minutes before the prodigy happened; how then could he have disguised himself so completely in so short a time, even supposing him to have known how to unlock a strange house? He added, that the two were so fearfully like one another, that he who had lived in the neighbourhood for twenty years could not distinguish the true one from the counterfeit. ‘But, for God’s sake, gentlemen, do you not hear the horrid shrieks opposite?’

“We rushed to the window—terrible and fearful voices rang across from the empty house; we fancied we saw the old Counsellor, pursued by his image in the morning-gown, hurry past the window repeatedly. On a sudden all was quiet. “We gazed on each other; the boldest among us proposed to cross over to the house—we all agreed to it. We crossed the street—the huge bell at the old man’s door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard in answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith’s—the door was broken open, the whole tide of anxious visitors poured up the wide silent staircase—all the doors were fastened; at length one was opened. In a splendid apartment, the Counsellor, his iron-grey frock-coat torn to pieces, his neatly dressed hair in horrible disorder, lay dead, strangled, on the sofa.

“Since that time no traces of Barighi have been found, neither in Stuttgart nor elsewhere.”"

Father Matthew - Guy de Maupassant

2011-05-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

The short fiction story Father Matthew by Guy de Maupassant:

"We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The light carriage flew along across the level country. Presently the horse slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.

One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us lay Rouen, the city of churches, with its Gothic belfries, sculptured like ivory trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb, whose thousands of smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky, opposite the thousand sacred steeples of the old city.

On the one hand the spire of the cathedral, the highest of human monuments, on the other the engine of the power-house, its rival, and almost as high, and a metre higher than the tallest pyramid in Egypt. Before us wound the Seine, with its scattered islands and bordered by white
banks, covered with a forest on the right and on the left immense meadows, bounded by another forest yonder in the distance. Here and there large ships lay at anchor along the banks of the wide river.

Three enormous steam boats were starting out, one behind the other, for Havre, and a chain of boats, a bark, two schooners and a brig, were going upstream to Rouen, drawn by a little tug that emitted a cloud of black smoke. My companion, a native of the country, did not glance at this wonderful landscape, but he smiled continually; he seemed to be amused at his thoughts.
Suddenly he cried:
"Ah, you will soon see something comical—Father Matthew's chapel. That is a sweet morsel, my boy."
I looked at him in surprise. He continued:
"I will give you a whiff of Normandy that will stay by you. Father Matthew is the handsomest Norman in the province and his chapel is one of the wonders of the world, nothing more nor less. But I will first give you a few words of explanation.

"Father Matthew, who is also called Father 'La Boisson,' is an old sergeant-major who has come back to his native land. He combines in admirable proportions, making a perfect whole, the humbug of the old soldier and the sly roguery of the Norman. On his return to Normandy, thanks to influence and incredible cleverness, he was made doorkeeper of a votive chapel, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin and frequented chiefly by young women who have gone astray . . . . He
composed and had painted a special prayer to his 'Good Virgin.' This prayer is a masterpiece of unintentional irony, of Norman wit, in which jest is blended with fear of the saint and with the superstitious fear of the secret influence of something. He has not much faith in his protectress, but he believes in her a little through prudence, and he is considerate of her through policy.

"This is how this wonderful prayer begins:
"'Our good Madame Virgin Mary, natural protectress of girl mothers in this land and all over the world, protect your servant who erred in a moment of forgetfulness . . .'
"It ends thus:
"'Do not forget me, especially when you are with your holy spouse, and intercede with God the Father that he may grant me a good husband, like your own.'

"This prayer, which was suppressed by the clergy of the district, is sold by him privately, and is said to be very efficacious for those who recite it with unction. "In fact he talks of the good Virgin as the valet de chambre of a redoubted prince might talk of his master who confided in him all his little private secrets. He knows a number of amusing anecdotes at his expense which he tells confidentially among friends as they sit over their glasses.
"But you will see for yourself.

"As the fees coming from the Virgin did not appear sufficient to him, he added to the main figure a little business in saints. He has them all, or nearly all. There was not room enough in the chapel, so he stored them in the wood-shed and brings them forth as soon as the faithful ask for them. He carved these little wooden statues himself—they are comical in the extreme—and painted them all bright green one year when they were painting his house. You know that saints
cure diseases, but each saint has his specialty, and you must not confound them or make any blunders. They are as jealous of each other as mountebanks. "In order that they may make no mistake, the old women come and consult Matthew.
"'For diseases of the ear which saint is the best?'
"'Why, Saint Osyme is good and Saint Pamphilius is not bad.' But that is not all.

"As Matthew has some time to spare, he drinks; but he drinks like a professional, with conviction, so much so that he is intoxicated regularly every evening. He is drunk, but he is aware of it. He is so well aware of it that he notices each day his exact degree of intoxication. That is his chief occupation; the chapel is a secondary matter.

"And he has invented—listen and catch on—he has invented the 'Saoulometre.'
"There is no such instrument, but Matthew's observations are as precise as those of a mathematician. You may hear him repeating incessantly: 'Since Monday I have had more than forty-five,' or else 'I was between fifty-two and fifty-eight,' or else 'I had at least sixty-six to seventy,' or 'Hullo, cheat, I thought I was in the fifties and here I find I had had seventy-five!'
"He never makes a mistake. "He declares that he never reached his limit, but as he acknowledges that his observations cease to be exact when he has passed ninety, one cannot depend absolutely on the truth of that statement. "When Matthew acknowledges that he has passed ninety, you may rest assured that he is blind drunk.
"On these occasions his wife, Melie, another marvel, flies into a fury. She waits for him at the door of the house, and as he enters she roars at him:
"'So there you are, slut, hog, giggling sot!'
"Then Matthew, who is not laughing any longer, plants himself opposite her and says in a severe tone:
"'Be still, Melie; this is no time to talk; wait till to-morrow.'
"If she keeps on shouting at him, he goes up to her and says in a shaky voice:
"'Don't bawl any more. I have had about ninety; I am not counting any more. Look out, I am going to hit you!'
"Then Melie beats a retreat.
"If, on the following day, she reverts to the subject, he laughs in her face and says:
"'Come, come! We have said enough. It is past. As long as I have not reached my limit there is no harm done. But if I go, past that I will allow you to correct me, my word on it!'"
We had reached the top of the hill. The road entered the delightful forest of Roumare.

Autumn, marvellous autumn, blended its gold and purple with the remaining traces of verdure. We passed through Duclair. Then, instead of going on to Jumieges, my friend turned to the left and, taking a crosscut, drove in among the trees.
And presently from the top of a high hill we saw again the magnificent valley of the Seine and the winding river beneath us. At our right a very small slate-covered building, with a bell tower as large as a sunshade, adjoined a pretty house with green Venetian blinds, and all covered with honeysuckle and roses.
"Here are some friends!" cried a big voice, and Matthew appeared on the threshold. He was a man about sixty, thin and with a goatee and long, white mustache. My friend shook him by the hand and introduced me, and Matthew took us into a clean kitchen, which served also as a dining-room. He said:
"I have no elegant apartment, monsieur. I do not like to get too far away from the food. The saucepans, you see, keep me company." Then, turning to my friend: "Why did you come on Thursday? You know quite well that this is the day I consult my Guardian Saint. I cannot go out this afternoon." And running to the door, he uttered a terrific roar: "Melie!" which must have startled the sailors in the ships along the stream in the valley below. Melie did not reply.
Then Matthew winked his eye knowingly. "She is not pleased with me, you see, because yesterday I was in the nineties." My friend began to laugh. "In the nineties, Matthew! How did you manage it?"

"I will tell you," said Matthew. "Last year I found only twenty rasieres (an old dry measure) of apricots. There are no more, but those are the only things to make cider of. So I made some, and yesterday I tapped the barrel. Talk of nectar! That was nectar. You shall tell me what you think of it. Polyte was here, and we sat down and drank a glass and another without being satisfied (one could go on drinking it until to-morrow), and at last, with glass after glass, I felt a chill at my stomach. I said to Polyte: 'Supposing we drink a glass of cognac to warm ourselves?' He agreed. But this cognac, it sets you on fire, so that we had to go back to the cider. But by going from chills to heat and heat to chills, I saw that I was in the nineties. Polyte was not far from his limit."

The door opened and Melie appeared. At once, before bidding us good-day, she cried:
"Great hog, you have both of you reached your limit!"
"Don't say that, Melie; don't say that," said Matthew, getting angry. "I have never reached my limit."

They gave us a delicious luncheon outside beneath two lime trees, beside the little chapel and overlooking the vast landscape. And Matthew told us, with a mixture of humor and unexpected credulity, incredible stories of miracles. We had drunk a good deal of delicious cider, sparkling and sweet, fresh and intoxicating, which he preferred to all other drinks, and were smoking our pipes astride our chairs when two women appeared. They were old, dried up and bent. After greeting us they asked for Saint Blanc. Matthew winked at us as he replied:
"I will get him for you." And he disappeared in his wood shed. He remained there fully five minutes. Then he came back with an expression of consternation. He raised his hands.

"I don't know where he is. I cannot find him. I am quite sure that I had him." Then making a speaking trumpet of his hands, he roared once more:

"Meli-e-a!"
"What's the matter?" replied his wife from the end of the garden.
"Where's Saint Blanc? I cannot find him in the wood shed."
Then Melie explained it this way:
"Was not that the one you took last week to stop up a hole in the rabbit hutch?" Matthew gave a start.
"By thunder, that may be!" Then turning to the women, he said:
"Follow me."

They followed him. We did the same, almost choking with suppressed laughter. Saint Blanc was indeed stuck into the earth like an ordinary stake, covered with mud and dirt, and forming a corner for the rabbit hutch. As soon as they perceived him, the two women fell on their knees, crossed themselves and began to murmur an "Oremus." But Matthew darted toward them. "Wait," he said, "you are in the mud; I will get you a bundle of straw." He went to fetch the straw and made them a priedieu. Then, looking at his muddy saint and doubtless afraid of bringing discredit on his business, he added: "I will clean him off a little for you." He took a pail of water and a brush and began to scrub the wooden image vigorously, while the two old women kept on praying. When he had finished he said:
"Now he is all right." And he took us back to the house to drink another glass.

As he was carrying the glass to his lips he stopped and said in a rather confused manner:
"All the same, when I put Saint Blanc out with the rabbits I thought he would not make any more money. For two years no one had asked for him. But the saints, you see, they are never out of date."

Head and Shoulders (V) - F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-05-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

Chapter V and the final one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (though not that short but it's one heck of a story, memorable from chapter I is: "I consider kissing intrinsically irrational") - Head and Shoulders (for all the chapters click here):

V
"“Sandra Pepys, Syncopated,” with an introduction by Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, appeared serially in Jordan’s Magazine, and came out in book form in March. From its first published instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough subject—a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York to go on the stage— treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made an irresistible appeal. Peter Boyce Wendell, who happened at that time to be advocating the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption of expressive vernacular words, stood as its sponsor and thundered his indorsement over the placid bromides of the conventional reviewers.

Marcia received three hundred dollars an instalment for the serial publication, which came at an opportune time, for though Horace’s monthly salary at the Hippodrome was now more than Marcia’s had ever been, young Marcia was emitting shrill cries which they interpreted as a demand for country air. So early April found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County, with a place for a lawn, a place for a garage, and a place for everything, including a sound-proof impregnable study, in which Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up when her daughter’s demands began to be abated, and compose immortally illiterate literature.

“It’s not half bad,” thought Horace one night as he was on his way from the station to his house. He was considering several prospects that had opened up, a four months’ vaudeville offer in five figures, a chance to go back to Princeton in charge of all gymnasium work. Odd! He had once intended to go back there in charge of all philosophic work, and now he had not even been stirred by the arrival in New York of Anton Laurier, his old idol.

The gravel crunched raucously under his heel. He saw the lights of his sitting-room gleaming and noticed a big car standing in the drive. Probably Mr. Jordan again, come to persuade Marcia to settle down to work. She had heard the sound of his approach and her form was silhouetted against the lighted door as she came out to meet him. “There’s some Frenchman here,” she whispered nervously. “I can’t pronounce his name, but he sounds awful deep. You’ll have to jaw with him.”
“What Frenchman?”
“You can’t prove it by me. He drove up an hour ago with Mr. Jordan, and said he wanted to meet Sandra Pepys, and all that sort of thing.” Two men rose from chairs as they went inside.

“Hello, Tarbox,” said Jordan. “I’ve just been bringing together two celebrities. I’ve brought M’sieur Laurier out with me. M’sieur Laurier, let me present Mr. Tarbox, Mrs. Tarbox’s husband.”
“Not Anton Laurier!” exclaimed Horace.
“But, yes. I must come. I have to come. I have read the book of Madame, and I have been charmed”—he fumbled in his pocket—“ ah, I have read of you too. In this newspaper which I read to-day it has your name.”
He finally produced a clipping from a magazine.
“Read it!” he said eagerly. “It has about you too.”
Horace’s eye skipped down the page.

“A distinct contribution to American dialect literature,” it said. “No attempt at literary tone; the book derives its very quality from this fact, as did ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ” Horace’s eyes caught a passage lower down; he became suddenly aghast—read on hurriedly: “Marcia Tarbox’s connection with the stage is not only as a spectator but as the wife of a performer. She was married last year to Horace Tarbox, who every evening delights the children at the Hippodrome with his wondrous flying-ring performance. It is said that the young couple have dubbed themselves Head and Shoulders, referring doubtless to the fact that Mrs. Tarbox supplies the literary and mental qualities, while the supple and agile shoulders of her husband contribute their share to the family fortunes. “Mrs. Tarbox seems to merit that much-abused title—‘prodigy.’ Only twenty——” Horace stopped reading, and with a very odd expression in his eyes gazed intently at Anton Laurier. “I want to advise you—” he began hoarsely.

“What?”
“About raps. Don’t answer them! Let them alone—have a padded door.”"

Head and Shoulders (IV) - F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-04-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

Chapter IV of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (though not that short but it's one heck of a story) - Head and Shoulders (for all the chapters click here):

IV
"Horace and Marcia were married early in February. The sensation in academic circles both at Yale and Princeton was tremendous. Horace Tarbox, who at fourteen had been played up in the Sunday magazines sections of metropolitan newspapers, was throwing over his career, his chance of being a world authority on American philosophy, by marrying a chorus girl—they made Marcia a chorus girl. But like all modern stories it was a four-and-ahalf-day wonder.

They took a flat in Harlem. After two weeks’ search, during which his idea of the value of academic knowledge faded unmercifully, Horace took a position as clerk with a South American export company— some one had told him that exporting was the coming thing. Marcia was to stay in her show for a few months—anyway until he got on his feet. He was getting a hundred and twenty-five to start with, and though of course they told him it was only a question of months until he would be earning double that, Marcia refused even to consider giving up the hundred and fifty a week that she was getting at the time.

“We’ll call ourselves Head and Shoulders,
dear,” she said softly, “and the shoulders’ll
have to keep shaking a little longer until the
old head gets started.”

“I hate it,” he objected gloomily. “Well,” she replied emphatically, “your salary wouldn’t keep us in a tenement. Don’t think I want to be public—I don’t. I want to be yours. But I’d be a half-wit to sit in one room and count the sunflowers on the wall-paper while I waited for you. When you pull down three hundred a month I’ll quit.” And much as it hurt his pride, Horace had to admit that hers was the wiser course. March mellowed into April. May read a gorgeous riot act to the parks and waters of Manhattan, and they were very happy. Horace, who had no habits whatsoever—he had never had time to form any— proved the most adaptable of husbands, and as Marcia entirely lacked opinions on the subjects that engrossed him there were very few joltings and bumpings. Their minds moved in different spheres. Marcia acted as practical factotum, and Horace lived either in his old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of triumphantly earthy worship and adoration of his wife. She was a continual source of astonishment to him— the freshness and originality of her mind, her dynamic, clear-headed energy, and her unfailing good humor.

And Marcia’s co-workers in the nine-o’clock show, whither she had transferred her talents, were impressed with her tremendous pride in her husband’s mental powers. Horace they knew only as a very slim, tight-lipped, and immature-looking young man, who waited every night to take her home.

“Horace,” said Marcia one evening when she met him as usual at eleven, “you looked like a ghost standing there against the street lights. You losing weight?”
He shook his head vaguely.
“I don’t know. They raised me to a hundred and thirty-five dollars to-day, and——”
“I don’t care,” said Marcia severely. “You’re killing yourself working at night. You read those big books on economy——”
“Economics,” corrected Horace.
“Well, you read ’em every night long after I’m asleep. And you’re getting all stooped over like you were before we were married.”
“But, Marcia, I’ve got to——”
“No, you haven’t, dear. I guess I’m running this shop for the present, and I won’t let my fella ruin his health and eyes. You got to get some exercise.”
“I do. Every morning I——”

“Oh, I know! But those dumb-bells of yours wouldn’t give a consumptive two degrees of fever. I mean real exercise. You’ve got to join a gymnasium. ’Member you told me you were such a trick gymnast once that they tried to get you out for the team in college and they couldn’t because you had a standing date with Herb Spencer?”

“I used to enjoy it,” mused Horace, “but it would take up too much time now.”
“All right,” said Marcia. “I’ll make a bargain with you. You join a gym and I’ll read one of those books from the brown row of ’em.” “ ‘Pepys’ Diary’? Why, that ought to be enjoyable. He’s very light.” “Not for me—he isn’t. It’ll be like digesting plate glass. But you been telling me how much it’d broaden my lookout. Well, you go to a gym three nights a week and I’ll take one big dose of Sammy.” Horace hesitated.

“Well——”
“Come on, now! You do some giant swings for me and I’ll chase some culture for you.” So Horace finally consented, and all through a baking summer he spent three and sometimes four evenings a week experimenting on the trapeze in Skipper’s Gymnasium. And in August he admitted to Marcia that it made him capable of more mental work during the day.
“Mens sana in corpore sano,” he said.
“Don’t believe in it,” replied Marcia. “I tried one of those patent medicines once and they’re all bunk. You stick to gymnastics.” One night in early September while he was going through one of his contortions on the rings in the nearly deserted room he was addressed by a meditative fat man whom he had noticed watching him for several nights.
“Say, lad, do that stunt you were doin’ last night.”

Horace grinned at him from his perch. “I invented it,” he said. “I got the idea from the fourth proposition of Euclid.”
“What circus he with?”
“He’s dead.”
“Well, he must of broke his neck doin’ that stunt. I set here last night thinkin’ sure you was goin’ to break yours.”
“Like this!” said Horace, and swinging onto the trapeze he did his stunt. “Don’t it kill your neck an’ shoulder muscles?”
“It did at first, but inside of a week I wrote the quod erat demonstrandum on it.”
“Hm!”
Horace swung idly on the trapeze.

“Ever think of takin’ it up professionally?” asked the fat man.
“Not I.”
“Good money in it if you’re willin’ to do stunts like ’at an’ can get away with it.”
“Here’s another,” chirped Horace eagerly, and the fat man’s mouth dropped suddenly agape as he watched this pink-jerseyed Prometheus again defy the gods and Isaac Newton.
The night following this encounter Horace got home from work to find a rather pale Marcia stretched out on the sofa waiting for him. “I fainted twice to-day,” she began without preliminaries. “What?” “Yep. You see baby’s due in four months now. Doctor says I ought to have quit dancing two weeks ago.”

Horace sat down and thought it over. “I’m glad, of course,” he said pensively—“I mean glad that we’re going to have a baby. But this means a lot of expense.” “I’ve got two hundred and fifty in the bank,” said Marcia hopefully, “and two weeks’ pay coming.” Horace computed quickly. “Including my salary, that’ll give us nearly fourteen hundred for the next six months.” Marcia looked blue. “That all? Course I can get a job singing somewhere this month. And I can go to work again in March.”
“Of course nothing!” said Horace gruffly. “You’ll stay right here. Let’s see now—there’ll be doctor’s bills and a nurse, besides the maid. We’ve got to have some more money.”

“Well,” said Marcia wearily, “I don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s up to the old head now. Shoulders is out of business.” Horace rose and pulled on his coat. “Where are you going?” “I’ve got an idea,” he answered. “I’ll be right back.” Ten minutes later as he headed down the street toward Skipper’s Gymnasium he felt a placid wonder, quite unmixed with humor, at what he was going to do. How he would have gaped at himself a year before! How every one would have gaped! But when you opened your door at the rap of life you let in many things. The gymnasium was brightly lit, and when his eyes became accustomed to the glare he found the meditative fat man seated on a pile of canvas mats smoking a big cigar.

“Say,” began Horace directly, “were you in earnest last night when you said I could make money on my trapeze stunts?” “Why, yes,” said the fat man in surprise. “Well, I’ve been thinking it over, and I believe I’d like to try it. I could work at night and on Saturday afternoons—and regularly if the pay is high enough.” The fat man looked at his watch. “Well,” he said, “Charlie Paulson’s the man to see. He’ll book you inside of four days, once he sees you work out. He won’t be in now, but I’ll get hold of him for to-morrow night.” The fat man was as good as his word.

Charlie Paulson arrived next night and put in a wondrous hour watching the prodigy swoop through the air in amazing parabolas, and on the night following he brought two large men with him who looked as though they had been born smoking black cigars and talking about money in low, passionate voices. Then on the succeeding Saturday Horace Tarbox’s torso made its first professional appearance in a gymnastic exhibition at the Cole-man Street Gardens. But though the audience numbered nearly five thousand people, Horace felt no nervousness. From his childhood he had read papers to audiences—learned that trick of detaching himself.

“Marcia,” he said cheerfully later that same night, “I think we’re out of the woods. Paulson thinks he can get me an opening at the Hippodrome, and that means an all-winter engagement. The Hippodrome, you know, is a big——”
“Yes, I believe I’ve heard of it,” interrupted Marcia, “but I want to know about this stunt you’re doing. It isn’t any spectacular suicide, is it?”
“It’s nothing,” said Horace quietly. “But if you can think of any nicer way of a man killing himself than taking a risk for you, why that’s the way I want to die.”

Marcia reached up and wound both arms tightly round his neck. “Kiss me,” she whispered, “and call me ‘dear heart.’ I love to hear you say ‘dear heart.’ And bring me a book to read to-morrow. No more Sam Pepys, but something trick and trashy. I’ve been wild for something to do all day. I felt like writing letters, but I didn’t have anybody to write to.” “Write to me,” said Horace. “I’ll read them.” “I wish I could,” breathed Marcia. “If I knew words enough I could write you the longest love-letter in the world—and never get tired.” But after two more months Marcia grew very tired indeed, and for a row of nights it was a very anxious, weary-looking young athlete who walked out before the Hippodrome crowd. Then there were two days when his place was taken by a young man who wore pale blue instead of white, and got very little applause. But after the two days Horace appeared again, and those who sat close to the stage remarked an expression of beatific happiness on that young acrobat’s face, even when he was twisting breathlessly in the air in the middle of his amazing and original shoulder swing. After that performance he laughed at the elevator man and dashed up the stairs to the flat five steps at a time—and then tiptoed very carefully into a quiet room.

“Marcia,” he whispered.
“Hello!” She smiled up at him wanly. “Horace, there’s something I want you to do. Look in my top bureau drawer and you’ll find a big stack of paper. It’s a book—sort of—Horace. I wrote it down in these last three months while I’ve been laid up. I wish you’d take it to that Peter Boyce Wendell who put my letter in his paper. He could tell you whether it’d be a good book. I wrote it just the way I talk, just the way I wrote that letter to him. It’s just a story about a lot of things that happened to me. Will you take it to him, Horace?”
“Yes, darling.”

He leaned over the bed until his head was beside her on the pillow, and began stroking back her yellow hair. “Dearest Marcia,” he said softly. “No,” she murmured, “call me what I told you to call me.” “Dear heart,” he whispered passionately—“ dearest, dearest heart.”
“What’ll we call her?” They rested a minute in happy, drowsy content, while Horace considered.
“We’ll call her Marcia Hume Tarbox,” he said at length.
“Why the Hume?”
“Because he’s the fellow who first introduced us.”

“That so?” she murmured, sleepily surprised. “I thought his name was Moon.” Her eyes closed, and after a moment the slow, lengthening surge of the bedclothes over her breast showed that she was asleep. Horace tiptoed over to the bureau and opening the top drawer found a heap of closely
scrawled, lead-smeared pages. He looked at the first sheet:

SANDRA PEPYS, SYNCOPATED BY MARCIA TARBOX

He smiled. So Samuel Pepys had made an impression on her after all. He turned a page and began to read. His smile deepened—he read on. Half an hour passed and he became aware that Marcia had waked and was watching him from the bed. “Honey,” came in a whisper.
“What, Marcia?”

“Do you like it?” Horace coughed.
“I seem to be reading on. It’s bright.”
“Take it to Peter Boyce Wendell. Tell him you got the highest marks in Princeton once and that you ought to know when a book’s good. Tell him this one’s a world beater.”
“All right, Marcia,” said Horace gently. Her eyes closed again and Horace crossing over kissed her forehead—stood there for a moment with a look of tender pity. Then he left the room.

All that night the sprawly writing on the pages, the constant mistakes in spelling an grammar, and the weird punctuation danced before his eyes. He woke several times in the night, each time full of a welling chaotic sympathy for this desire of Marcia’s soul to express itself in words. To him there was something infinitely pathetic about it, and for the first time in months he began to turn over in his mind his own half-forgotten dreams. He had meant to write a series of books, to popularize the new realism as Schopenhauer had popularized pessimism and William James pragmatism. But life hadn’t come that way. Life took hold of people and forced them into flying rings. He laughed to think of that rap at his door, the diaphanous shadow in Hume, Marcia’s threatened kiss.

“And it’s still me,” he said aloud in wonder as he lay awake in the darkness. “I’m the man who sat in Berkeley with temerity to wonder if that rap would have had actual existence had my ear not been there to hear it. I’m still that man. I could be electrocuted for the crimes he committed. “Poor gauzy souls trying to express ourselves in something tangible. Marcia with her written book; I with my unwritten ones.

Trying to choose our mediums and then taking what we get—and being glad.”"

Head and Shoulders (III) - F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-04-29T01:34:00.000-07:00

Chapter III of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (though not that short but it's one heck of a story, indeed, one heck of a story) - Head and Shoulders (for all the chapters click here):

"He was there again. She saw him when she took her first glance at the restless Manhattan audience—down in the front row with his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her. And she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where the high-rouged row of ballet faces and the massed whines of the violins were as imperceivable as powder on a marble Venus. An instinctive defiance rose within her.

“Silly boy!” she said to herself hurriedly, and she didn’t take her encore.
“What do they expect for a hundred a week—perpetual motion?” she grumbled to herself in the wings.

“What’s the trouble, Marcia?”
“Guy I don’t like down in front.”
During the last act as she waited for her specialty she had an odd attack of stage fright. She had never sent Horace the promised post-card. Last night she had pretended not to see him—had hurried from the theatre immediately after her dance to pass a sleepless night in her apartment, thinking—as she had so often in the last month—of his pale, rather intent face, his slim, boyish figure, the merciless, unworldly abstraction that made him charming to her. And now that he had come she felt vaguely sorry—as though an unwonted responsibility was being forced on her.
“Infant prodigy!” she said aloud.
“What?” demanded the negro comedian standing beside her.
“Nothing—just talking about myself.”

On the stage she felt better. This was her dance—and she always felt that the way she did it wasn’t suggestive any more than to some men every pretty girl is suggestive. She made it a stunt.

“Uptown, downtown, jelly on a spoon,
After sundown shiver by the moon.”

He was not watching her now. She saw that clearly. He was looking very deliberately at a castle on the back drop, wearing that expression he had worn in the Taft Grill. A wave of exasperation swept over her— he was criticising her.

“That’s the vibration that thr-ills me,
Funny how affection fi-lls me,
Uptown, downtown——”

Unconquerable revulsion seized her. She was suddenly and horribly conscious of her audience as she had never been since her first appearance. Was that a leer on a pallid face in the front row, a droop of disgust on one young girl’s mouth? These shoulders of hers—these shoulders shaking—were they hers? Were they real? Surely shoulders weren’t made for this!

“Then—you’ll see at a glance
I’ll need some funeral ushers with St. Vitusdance
At the end of the world I’ll——”

The bassoon and two cellos crashed into a final chord. She paused and poised a moment on her toes with every muscle tense, her young face looking out dully at the audience in what one young girl afterward called “such a curious, puzzled look,” and then without bowing rushed from the stage. Into the dressing-room she sped, kicked out of one dress and into another, and caught a taxi outside. Her apartment was very warm—small, it was, with a row of professional pictures and sets of Kipling and O. Henry which she had bought once from a blue-eyed agent and read occasionally. And there were several chairs which matched, but were none of them comfortable, and a pink-shaded lamp with blackbirds painted on it and an atmosphere of rather stifled pink throughout.

There were nice things in it—nice things unrelentingly hostile to each other, offsprings of a vicarious, impatient taste acting in stray moments. The worst was typified by a great picture framed in oak bark of Passaic as seen from the Erie Railroad— altogether a frantic, oddly extravagant, oddly penurious attempt to make a cheerful room. Marcia knew it was a failure. Into this room came the prodigy and took her two hands awkwardly. “I followed you this time,” he said.
“Oh!”
“I want you to marry me,” he said. Her arms went out to him. She kissed his mouth with a sort of passionate wholesomeness.
“There!”
“I love you,” he said.

She kissed him again and then with a little sigh flung herself into an armchair and half lay there, shaken with absurd laughter. “Why, you infant prodigy!” she cried. “Very well, call me that if you want to. I once told you that I was ten thousand years older than you—I am.” She laughed again. “I don’t like to be disapproved of.” “No one’s ever going to disapprove of you again.” “Omar,” she asked, “why do you want to marry me?” The prodigy rose and put his hands in his pockets. “Because I love you, Marcia Meadow.” And then she stopped calling him Omar.

“Dear boy,” she said, “you know I sort of love you. There’s something about you—I can’t tell what—that just puts my heart through the wringer every time I’m round you. But, honey—” She paused. “But what?” “But lots of things. But you’re only just eighteen, and I’m nearly twenty.”
“Nonsense!” he interrupted. “Put it this way—that I’m in my nineteenth year and you’re nineteen. That makes us pretty close—without counting that other ten thousand years I mentioned.”
Marcia laughed.
“But there are some more ‘buts.’ Your people——”
“My people!” exclaimed the prodigy ferociously.
“My people tried to make a monstrosity out of me.” His face grew quite crimson at the enormity of what he was going to say. “My people can go way back and sit down!”
“My heavens!” cried Marcia in alarm. “All that? On tacks, I suppose.”
“Tacks—yes,” he agreed wildly—“on anything.
The more I think of how they allowed me to become a little dried-up mummy——”
“What makes you think you’re that?” asked Marcia quietly—“me?”
“Yes. Every person I’ve met on the streets since I met you has made me jealous because they knew what love was before I did. I used to call it the ‘sex impulse.’ Heavens!” “There’s more ‘buts,’ ” said Marcia. “What are they?”
“How could we live?”
“I’ll make a living.”

“You’re in college.” “Do you think I care anything about taking a Master of Arts degree?” “You want to be Master of Me, hey?”
“Yes! What? I mean, no!” Marcia laughed, and crossing swiftly over sat in his lap. He put his arm round her wildly and implanted the vestige of a kiss somewhere near her neck.
“There’s something white about you,” mused Marcia, “but it doesn’t sound very logical.”
“Oh, don’t be so darned reasonable!”
“I can’t help it,” said Marcia.
“I hate these slot-machine people!”
“But we——”
“Oh, shut up!”

And as Marcia couldn’t talk through her ears she had to."

Head and Shoulders (II) - F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-04-28T01:24:00.000-07:00

Chapter II of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (though not that short but it's one heck of a story) - Head and Shoulders (for all the chapters click here):

II
"On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row and witnessed “Home James.” Oddly enough he found that he was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the Hammerstein tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.

In the intermission after the second act an usher materialized beside him, demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox, and then handed him a note written in a round adolescent hand. Horace read it in some confusion, while the usher lingered with withering patience in the aisle.

“DEAR OMAR: After the show I always grow an awful hunger. If you want to satisfy it for me in the Taft Grill just communicate your answer to the big-timber guide that brought this and oblige.
Your friend, MARCIA MEADOW.”

“Tell her”—he coughed—“tell her that it will be quite all right. I’ll meet her in front of the theatre.” The big-timber guide smiled arrogantly. “I giss she meant for you to come roun’ t’ the stage door.” “Where—where is it?”
“Ou’side. Tunayulef. Down ee alley.”
“What?”
“Ou’side. Turn to y’ left! Down ee alley!” The arrogant person withdrew. A freshman behind Horace snickered. Then half an hour later, sitting in the Taft Grill opposite the hair that was yellow by natural pigment, the prodigy was saying an odd thing.
“Do you have to do that dance in the last act?” he was asking earnestly—“I mean, would they dismiss you if you refused to do it?” Marcia grinned.
“It’s fun to do it. I like to do it.”
And then Horace came out with a faux pas. “I should think you’d detest it,” he remarked succinctly. “The people behind me were making remarks about your bosom.” Marcia blushed fiery red.

“I can’t help that,” she said quickly. “The dance to me is only a sort of acrobatic stunt. Lord, it’s hard enough to do! I rub liniment into my shoulders for an hour every night.” “Do you have—fun while you’re on the stage?”
“Uh-huh—sure! I got in the habit of having people look at me, Omar, and I like it.”
“Hm!” Horace sank into a brownish study.
“How’s the Brazilian trimmings?”
“Hm!” repeated Horace, and then after a pause: “Where does the play go from here?”
“New York.”
“For how long?”
“All depends. Winter—maybe.”
“Oh!”

“Coming up to lay eyes on me, Omar, or aren’t you int’rested? Not as nice here, is it, as it was up in your room? I wish we was there now.”
“I feel idiotic in this place,” confessed Horace, looking round him nervously.
“Too bad! We got along pretty well.”
At this he looked suddenly so melancholy that she changed her tone, and reaching over patted his hand. “Ever take an actress out to supper before?” “No,” said Horace miserably, “and I never will again. I don’t know why I came to-night. Here under all these lights and with all these people laughing and chattering I feel completely out of my sphere. I don’t know what to talk to you about.” “We’ll talk about me. We talked about you last time.”

“Very well.”
“Well, my name really is Meadow, but my first name isn’t Marcia— it’s Veronica. I’m nineteen. Question—how did the girl make her leap to the footlights? Answer—she was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe by pushing Nabiscoes in Marcel’s tea-room in Trenton. She started going with a guy named Rob-bins, a singer in the Trent House cabaret, and he got her to try a song and dance with him one evening. In a month we were filling the supper-room every night. Then we went to New York with meetmy- friend letters thick as a pile of napkins. “In two days we’d landed a job at Divinerries’, and I learned to shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries’ six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his column—said that the style was like Carlyle’s, only more rugged, and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American literature. This got me a coupla more vaudeville offers and a chance as an ingénue in a regular show. I took it—and here I am, Omar.”

When she finished they sat for a moment in silence, she draping the last skeins of a Welsh rabbit on her fork and waiting for him to speak. “Let’s get out of here,” he said suddenly. Marcia’s eyes hardened. “What’s the idea? Am I making you sick?” “No, but I don’t like it here. I don’t like to be sitting here with you.” Without another word Marcia signalled for the waiter.
“What’s the check?” she demanded briskly. “My part—the rabbit and the ginger ale.” Horace watched blankly as the waiter figured it. “See here,” he began, “I intended to pay for yours too. You’re my guest.” With a half-sigh Marcia rose from the table and walked from the room. Horace, his face a document in bewilderment, laid a bill down and followed her out, up the stairs and into the lobby. He overtook her in front of the elevator and they faced each other.
“See here,” he repeated, “you’re my guest. Have I said something to offend you?” After an instant of wonder Marcia’s eyes softened. “You’re a rude fella,” she said slowly. “Don’t you know you’re rude?” “I can’t help it,” said Horace with a directness she found quite disarming. “You know I like you.”

“You said you didn’t like being with me.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“Why not?” Fire blazed suddenly from the gray forests of his eyes.
“Because I didn’t. I’ve formed the habit of liking you. I’ve been thinking of nothing much else for two days.”
“Well, if you——”
“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “I’ve got something to say. It’s this: in six weeks I’ll be
eighteen years old. When I’m eighteen years old I’m coming up to New York to see you. Is there some place in New York where we can go and not have a lot of people in the room?”
“Sure!” smiled Marcia. “You can come up to my ’partment. Sleep on the couch, if you want to.”

“I can’t sleep on couches,” he said shortly. “But I want to talk to you.” “Why, sure,” repeated Marcia—“in my ’partment.” In his excitement Horace put his hands in his pockets.
“All right—just so I can see you alone. I want to talk to you as we talked up in my room.”
“Honey boy,” cried Marcia, laughing, “is it that you want to kiss me?” “Yes,” Horace almost shouted. “I’ll kiss you if you want me to.” The elevator man was looking at them reproachfully.
Marcia edged toward the grated door.
“I’ll drop you a post-card,” she said. Horace’s eyes were quite wild.

“Send me a post-card! I’ll come up any time after January first. I’ll be eighteen then.” And as she stepped into the elevator he coughed enigmatically, yet with a vague challenge, at the ceiling, and walked quickly away."

Head and Shoulders (I) - F. Scott Fitzgerald

2011-04-27T01:03:00.000-07:00

Chapter I of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story (though not that short) - Head and Shoulders (for all the chapters click here):

I
"In 1915 Horace Tarbox was thirteen years old. In that year he took the examinations for entrance to Princeton University and received the Grade A—excellent—in Cæsar, Cicero, Vergil, Xenophon, Homer, Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, and Chemistry. Two years later, while George M. Cohan was composing “Over There,” Horace was leading the sophomore class by several lengths and digging out theses on “The Syllogism as an Obsolete Scholastic Form,” and during the battle of Château-Thierry he was sitting at his desk deciding whether or not to wait until his seventeenth birthday before beginning his series of essays on “The Pragmatic Bias of the New Realists.”

After a while some newsboy told him that the war was over, and he was glad, because it meant that Peat Brothers, publishers, would get out their new edition of “Spinoza’s Improvement of the Understanding.” Wars were all very well in their way, made young men self-reliant or something, but Horace felt that he could never forgive the President for allowing a brass band to play under his window on the night of the false armistice, causing him to leave three important sentences out of his thesis on “German Idealism.” The next year he went up to Yale to take his degree as Master of Arts. He was seventeen then, tall and slender, with near-sighted gray eyes and an air of keeping himself utterly detached from the mere words he let drop. “I never feel as though I’m talking to him,” expostulated Professor Dillinger to a sympathetic colleague. “He makes me feel as though I were talking to his representative. I always expect him to say: ‘Well, I’ll ask myself and find out."

And then, just as nonchalantly as though Horace Tarbox had been Mr. Beef the butcher or Mr. Hat the haberdasher, life reached in, seized him, handled him, stretched him, and unrolled him like a piece of Irish lace on a Saturday-afternoon bargain-counter. To move in the literary fashion I should say that this was all because when way back in colonial days the hardy pioneers had come to a bald place in Connecticut and asked of each other, “Now, what shall we build here?” the hardiest one among ’em had answered: “Let’s build a town where theatrical managers can try out musical comedies!” How afterward they founded Yale College there, to try the musical comedies on, is a story every one knows. At any rate one December, “Home James” opened at the Shubert, and all the students encored Marcia Meadow, who sang a song about the Blundering Blimp in the first act and did a shaky, shivery, celebrated dance in the last. Marcia was nineteen. She didn’t have wings, but audiences agreed generally that she didn’t need them. She was a blonde by natural pigment, and she wore no paint on the streets at high noon. Outside of that she was no better than most women. It was Charlie Moon who promised her five thousand Pall Malls if she would pay a call on Horace Tarbox, prodigy extraordinary. Charlie was a senior in Sheffield, and he and Horace were first cousins. They liked and pitied each other.

Horace had been particularly busy that night. The failure of the Frenchman Laurier to appreciate the significance of the new realists was preying on his mind. In fact, his only reaction to a low, clear-cut rap at his study was to make him speculate as to whether any rap would have actual existence without an ear there to hear it. He fancied he was verging more and more toward pragmatism. But at that moment, though he did not know it, he was verging with astounding rapidity toward something quite different. The rap sounded—three seconds leaked by—the rap sounded.

“Come in,” muttered Horace automatically. He heard the door open and then close, but, bent over his book in the big armchair before the fire, he did not look up.
“Leave it on the bed in the other room,” he said absently.
“Leave what on the bed in the other room?” Marcia Meadow had to talk her songs, but her speaking voice was like byplay on a harp.
“The laundry.”
“I can’t.”
Horace stirred impatiently in his chair.
“Why can’t you?”
“Why, because I haven’t got it.”
“Hm!” he replied testily. “Suppose you go back and get it.”

Across the fire from Horace was another easy-chair. He was accustomed to change to it in the course of an evening by way of exercise and variety. One chair he called Berkeley, the other he called Hume. He suddenly heard a sound as of a rustling, diaphanous form sinking into Hume. He glanced up. “Well,” said Marcia with the sweet smile she used in Act Two (“Oh, so the Duke liked my dancing!”), “Well, Omar Khayyam, here I am beside you singing in the wilderness.” Horace stared at her dazedly. The momentary suspicion came to him that she existed there only as a phantom of his imagination. Women didn’t come into men’s rooms and sink into men’s Humes.

Women brought laundry and took your seat in the street-car and married you later on when you were old enough to know fetters. This woman had clearly materialized out of Hume. The very froth of her brown gauzy dress was an emanation from Hume’s leather arm there! If he looked long enough he would see Hume right through her and then he would be alone again in the room. He passed his fist across his eyes. He really must take up those trapeze exercises again.
“For Pete’s sake, don’t look so critical!” objected the emanation pleasantly. “I feel as if you were going to wish me away with that patent dome of yours. And then there wouldn’t be anything left of me except my shadow in your eyes.”
Horace coughed. Coughing was one of his two gestures. When he talked you forgot he had a body at all. It was like hearing a phonograph record by a singer who had been dead a long time.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want them letters,” whined Marcia melodramatically—“ them letters of mine you bought from my grandsire in 1881.” Horace considered.

“I haven’t got your letters,” he said evenly. “I am only seventeen years old. My father was not born until March 3, 1879. You evidently have me confused with some one else.” “You’re only seventeen?” repeated Marcia suspiciously.
“Only seventeen.”
“I knew a girl,” said Marcia reminiscently, “who went on the ten-twenty-thirty when she was sixteen. She was so stuck on herself that she could never say ‘sixteen’ without putting the ‘only’ before it. We got to calling her ‘Only Jessie.’ And she’s just where she was when she started—only worse. ‘Only’ is a bad habit, Omar—it sounds like an alibi.”
“My name is not Omar.”
“I know,” agreed Marcia, nodding—“your name’s Horace. I just call you Omar because you remind me of a smoked cigarette.”

“And I haven’t your letters. I doubt if I’ve ever met your grandfather. In fact, I think it very improbable that you yourself were alive in 1881.” Marcia stared at him in wonder. “Me—1881? Why sure! I was second-line stuff when the Florodora Sextette was still in the convent. I was the original nurse to Mrs. Sol Smith’s Juliette. Why, Omar, I was a canteen singer during the War of 1812.” Horace’s mind made a sudden successful leap, and he grinned.
“Did Charlie Moon put you up to this?” Marcia regarded him inscrutably.
“Who’s Charlie Moon?”
“Small—wide nostrils—big ears.” She grew several inches and sniffed.

“I’m not in the habit of noticing my friends’ nostrils.”
“Then it was Charlie?”
Marcia bit her lip—and then yawned. “Oh, let’s change the subject, Omar. I’ll pull a snore in this chair in a minute.”
“Yes,” replied Horace gravely, “Hume has often been considered soporific.”
“Who’s your friend—and will he die?”
Then of a sudden Horace Tarbox rose slenderly and began to pace the room with his hands in his pockets. This was his other gesture. “I don’t care for this,” he said as if he were talking to himself—“at all. Not that I mind your being here—I don’t. You’re quite a pretty little thing, but I don’t like Charlie Moon’s sending you up here. Am I a laboratory experiment on which the janitors as well as the chemists can make experiments? Is my intellectual development humorous in any way? Do I look like the pictures of the little Boston boy in the comic magazines? Has that callow ass, Moon, with his eternal tales about his week in Paris, any right to——”
“No,” interrupted Marcia emphatically. “And you’re a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me.”

Horace stopped quickly in front of her. “Why do you want me to kiss you?” he asked intently. “Do you just go round kissing people?” “Why, yes,” admitted Marcia, unruffled. “ ’At’s all life is. Just going round kissing people.” “Well,” replied Horace emphatically, “I must say your ideas are horribly garbled! In the first place life isn’t just that, and in the second place I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits. This year I’ve got in the habit of lolling in bed until seven-thirty.” Marcia nodded understandingly. “Do you ever have any fun?” she asked. “What do you mean by fun?” “See here,” said Marcia sternly, “I like you,
Omar, but I wish you’d talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever had any fun.” Horace shook his head. “Later, perhaps,” he answered. “You see I’m a plan. I’m an experiment. I don’t say that I don’t get tired of it sometimes—I do. Yet—oh, I can’t explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call fun wouldn’t be fun to me.” “Please explain.”

Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at him.
“Please explain.”
Horace turned.
“If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn’t in?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Very well, then. Here’s my history: I was a ‘why’ child. I wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system of answering every question I asked him to the best of his ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear trouble—seven operations between the ages of nine and twelve. Of course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.
“I passed off my college examinations when I was thirteen because I couldn’t help it. My chief associates were professors, and I took a tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine intelligence, for though I was unusually gifted I was not abnormal in other ways. When I was sixteen I got tired of being a freak; I decided that some one had made a bad mistake. Still as I’d gone that far I concluded to finish it up by taking my degree of Master of Arts. My chief interest in life is the study of modern philosophy. I am a realist of the School of Anton Laurier—with Bergsonian trimmings 17—and I’ll be eighteen years old in two months. That’s all.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Marcia. “That’s enough! You do a neat job with the parts of speech.” “Satisfied?”
“No, you haven’t kissed me.”

“It’s not in my programme,” demurred Horace.
“Understand that I don’t pretend to be above physical things. They have their place,
but——” “Oh, don’t be so darned reasonable!” “I can’t help it.” “I hate these slot-machine people.”
“I assure you I—” began Horace.
“Oh, shut up!”
“My own rationality——”
“I didn’t say anything about your nationality. You’re an Amuricun, ar’n’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s O.K. with me. I got a notion I want to see you do something that isn’t in your highbrow programme. I want to see if a whatchcall- em with Brazilian trimmings—that thing you said you were—can be a little human.” Horace shook his head again.
“I won’t kiss you.”
“My life is blighted,” muttered Marcia tragically. “I’m a beaten woman. I’ll go through life without ever having a kiss with Brazilian trimmings.” She sighed. “Anyways, Omar, will you come and see my show?”
“What show?”
“I’m a wicked actress from ‘Home James’!”
“Light opera?”
“Yes—at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian rice-planter. That might interest
you.”
“I saw ‘The Bohemian Girl’ once,” reflected Horace aloud. “I enjoyed it—to some extent.”

“Then you’ll come?”
“Well, I’m—I’m——”
“Oh, I know—you’ve got to run down to Brazil for the week-end.”
“Not at all. I’d be delighted to come.” Marcia clapped her hands.
“Goodyforyou! I’ll mail you a ticket— Thursday night?”
“Why, I——”
“Good! Thursday night it is.”
She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his shoulders. “I like you, Omar. I’m sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you’d be sort of frozen, but you’re a nice boy.” He eyed her sardonically.

“I’m several thousand generations older than you are.”
“You carry your age well.” They shook hands gravely. “My name’s Marcia Meadow,” she said emphatically. “ ’Member it—Marcia Meadow. And I won’t tell Charlie Moon you were in.”
An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of stairs three at a time she
heard a voice call over the upper banister: “Oh, say——”
She stopped and looked up—made out a vague form leaning over. “Oh, say!” called the prodigy again. “Can you hear me?” “Here’s your connection, Omar.” “I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational.”

“Impression? Why, you didn’t even give me the kiss! Never fret—so long.” Two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine voice. A tentative cough sounded from above. Gathering her skirts, Marcia dived wildly down the last flight, and was swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside. Up-stairs Horace paced the floor of his study. From time to time he glanced toward Berkeley waiting there in suave dark-red respectability, an open book lying suggestively on his cushions. And then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him each time nearer to Hume. There was something about Hume that was strangely and inexpressibly different. The diaphanous form still seemed hovering near, and had Horace sat there he would have felt as if he were sitting on a lady’s lap. And though Horace couldn’t have named the quality of difference, there was such a quality—quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real, nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two hundred years of his nfluence he had never radiated before.

Hume was radiating attar of roses."

A Normandy Joke - Guy de Maupassant

2011-04-26T00:47:00.000-07:00

A classic Guy de Maupassant short story which I happen to like very much. Guess why? A Normandy Joke by Guy de Maupassant:

"It was a wedding procession that was coming along the road between the tall trees that bounded the farms and cast their shadow on the road. At the head were the bride and groom, then the family, then the invited guests, and last of all the poor of the neighborhood. The village urchins who hovered about the narrow road like flies ran in and out of the ranks or climbed up the trees to see it better.

The bridegroom was a good-looking young fellow, Jean Patu, the richest farmer in the neighborhood, but he was above all things, an ardent sportsman who seemed to take leave of his senses in order to satisfy that passion, and who spent large sums on his dogs, his keepers, his ferrets and his guns. The bride, Rosalie Roussel, had been courted by all the likely young fellows in the district, for they all thought her handsome and they knew that she would have a good dowry. But she had chosen Patu; partly, perhaps, because she liked him better than she did
the others, but still more, like a careful Normandy girl, because he had more crown pieces.

As they entered the white gateway of the husband's farm, forty shots resounded without their seeing those who fired, as they were hidden in the ditches. The noise seemed to please the men, who were slouching along heavily in their best clothes, and Patu left his wife, and running up to a farm servant whom he perceived behind a tree, took his gun and fired a shot himself, as frisky as a young colt. Then they went on, beneath the apple trees which were heavy with fruit, through the high grass and through the midst of the calves, who looked at them with their great eyes, got up slowly and remained standing, with their muzzles turned toward the wedding party.

The men became serious when they came within measurable distance of the wedding dinner. Some of them, the rich ones, had on tall, shining silk hats, which seemed altogether out of place there; others had old head-coverings with a long nap, which might have been taken for moleskin, while the humblest among them wore caps. All the women had on shawls, which they wore loosely on their back, holding the tips ceremoniously under their arms. They were red, parti-colored, flaming shawls, and their brightness seemed to astonish the black fowls on the dung-heap, the ducks on the side of the pond and the pigeons on the thatched roofs.

The extensive farm buildings seemed to be waiting there at the end of that archway of apple trees, and a sort of vapor came out of open door and windows and an almost overpowering odor of eatables was exhaled from the vast building, from all its openings and from its very walls. The string of guests extended through the yard; but when the foremost of them reached the house, they broke the chain and dispersed, while those behind were still coming in at the open gate.
The ditches were now lined with urchins and curious poor people, and the firing did not cease, but came from every side at once, and a cloud of smoke, and that odor which has the same intoxicating effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere. The women were shaking their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the dust, were undoing their cap-strings and pulling their shawls over their arms, and then they went into the house to lay them aside altogether for the time. The table was laid in the great kitchen that would hold a hundred persons; they sat
down to dinner at two o'clock; and at eight o'clock they were still eating, and the men, in their shirt-sleeves, with their waistcoats unbuttoned and with red faces, were swallowing down the food and drink as if they had been whirlpools. The cider sparkled merrily, clear and golden in the large glasses, by the side of the dark, blood-colored wine, and between every dish they made a "hole," the Normandy hole, with a glass of brandy which inflamed the body and put foolish
notions into the head. Low jokes were exchanged across the table until the whole arsenal of peasant wit was exhausted. For the last hundred years the same broad stories had served for similar occasions, and, although every one knew them, they still hit the mark and made both rows of guests roar with laughter.

At one end of the table four young fellows, who were neighbors, were preparing some practical jokes for the newly married couple, and they seemed to have got hold of a good one by the way they whispered and laughed, and suddenly one of them, profiting by a moment of silence, exclaimed: "The poachers will have a good time to-night, with this moon! I say, Jean, you will not be looking at the moon, will you?" The bridegroom turned to him quickly and replied: "Only let them come, that's all!" But the other young fellow began to laugh, and said: "I do not
think you will pay much attention to them!"

The whole table was convulsed with laughter, so that the glasses shook, but the bridegroom became furious at the thought that anybody would profit by his wedding to come and poach on his land, and repeated: "I only say-just let them come!"

Then there was a flood of talk with a double meaning which made the bride blush somewhat, although she was trembling with expectation; and when they had emptied the kegs of brandy they all went to bed. The young couple went into their own room, which was on the ground floor, as most rooms in farmhouses are. As it was very warm, they opened the window and closed the shutters. A small lamp in bad taste, a present from the bride's father, was burning on the chest of drawers, and the bed stood ready to receive the young people. The young woman had already taken off her wreath and her dress, and she was in her petticoat, unlacing her boots, while Jean was finishing his cigar and looking at her out of the corners of his eyes. Suddenly, with a brusque movement, like a man who is about to set to work, he took off his coat. She had already taken off her boots, and was now pulling off her stockings, and then she said to him: "Go and hide yourself behind the curtains while I get into bed."

He seemed as if he were about to refuse; but at last he did as she asked him, and in a moment she unfastened her petticoat, which slipped down, fell at her feet and lay on the ground. She left it there, stepped over it in her loose chemise and slipped into the bed, whose springs creaked beneath her weight. He immediately went up to the bed, and, stooping over his wife, he sought her lips, which she hid beneath the pillow, when a shot was heard in the distance, in the
direction of the forest of Rapees, as he thought. He raised himself anxiously, with his heart beating, and running to the window, he opened the shutters. The full moon flooded the yard with yellow light, and the reflection of the apple trees made black shadows at their feet, while in the distance the fields gleamed, covered with the ripe corn. But as he was leaning out, listening to every sound in the still night, two bare arms were put round his neck, and his wife whispered, trying to pull him back: "Do leave them alone; it has nothing to do with you. Come to bed."

He turned round, put his arms round her, and drew her toward him, but just as he was laying her on the 'bed, which yielded beneath her weight, they heard another report, considerably nearer this time, and Jean, giving way to his tumultuous rage, swore aloud: "Damn it! They will think I do not go out and see what it is because of you! Wait, wait a few minutes!" He put on his shoes again, took down his gun, which was always hanging within reach against the wall, and, as his wife threw herself on her knees in her terror, imploring him not to go, he hastily freed himself, ran to the window and jumped into the yard.

She waited one hour, two hours, until daybreak, but her husband did not return. Then she lost her head, aroused the house, related how angry Jean was, and said that he had gone after the poachers, and immediately all the male farmservants, even the boys, went in search of their master. They found him two leagues from the farm, tied hand and foot, half dead with rage, his gun broken, his trousers turned inside out, and with three dead hares hanging round his neck, and a placard on his chest with these words: "Who goes on the chase loses his place."

In later years, when he used to tell this story of his wedding night, he usually added: "Ah! as far as a joke went it was a good joke. They caught me in a snare, as if I had been a rabbit, the dirty brutes, and they shoved my head into a bag. But if I can only catch them some day they had better look out for themselves!"

That is how they amuse themselves in Normandy on a wedding day."

Belphagor - Niccolo Machiavelli

2011-04-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

Niccolo Machiavelli's Belphagor, a demonology-considered-story which you will see, is quite entertaining and philosophical. From wiki:"In demonology, Belphegor (or Beelphegor) is a demon, and one of the seven princes of Hell, who helps people to make discoveries. He seduces people by suggesting to them ingenious inventions that will make them rich. According to some 16th century demonologists, his power is stronger in April. Bishop and witch-hunter Peter Binsfeld believed that Belphegor tempts by means of laziness. Also, according to Peter Binsfeld's Binsfeld's Classification of Demons, Belphegor is the chief demon of the deadly sin known as Sloth in Christian tradition. Belphegor may also represent Vanity."

"We read in the ancient archives of Florence the following account, as it was received from the lips of a very holy man, greatly respected by every one for the sanctity of his manners at the period in which he lived. Happening once to be deeply absorbed in his prayers, such was their efficacy, that he saw an infinite number of condemned souls, belonging to those miserable mortals who had died in their sins, undergoing the punishment due to their offences in the regions below. He remarked that the greater part of them lamented nothing so bitterly as their folly in having taken wives, attributing to them the whole of their misfortunes. Much surprised at this, Minos and Rhadamanthus, with the rest of the infernal judges, unwilling to credit all the abuse heaped upon the female sex, and wearied from day to day with its repetition, agreed to bring the matter before Pluto. It was then resolved that the conclave of infernal princes should form a committee of inquiry, and should adopt such measures as might be deemed most advisable by the court in order to discover the truth or falsehood of the calumnies which they heard.

All being assembled in council, Pluto addressed them as follows: “Dearly beloved demons! though by celestial dispensation and the irreversible decree of fate this kingdom fell to my share, and I might strictly dispense with any kind of celestial or earthly responsibility, yet, as it is more prudent and respectful to consult the laws and to hear the opinion of others, I have resolved to be guided by your advice, particularly in a case that may chance to cast some imputation upon our government. For the souls of all men daily arriving in our kingdom still continue to lay the whole blame upon their wives, and as this appears to us impossible, we must be careful how we decide in such a business, lest we also should come in for a share of their abuse, on account of our too great severity; and yet judgment must be pronounced, lest we be taxed with negligence and with indifference to the interests of justice. Now, as the latter is the fault of a careless, and the former of an unjust judge, we, wishing to avoid the trouble and the blame that might attach to both, yet hardly seeing how to get clear of it, naturally enough apply to you for assistance, in order that you may look to it, and contrive in some way that, as we have hitherto reigned without the slightest imputation upon our character, we may continue to do so for the future.”

The affair appearing to be of the utmost importance to all the princes present, they first resolved that it was necessary to ascertain the truth, though they differed as to the best means of accomplishing this object. Some were of opinion that they ought to choose one or more from among themselves, who should be commissioned to pay a visit to the world, and in a human shape endeavour personally to ascertain how far such reports were grounded in truth. To many others it appeared that this might be done without so much trouble merely by compelling some of the wretched souls to confess the truth by the application of a variety
of tortures. But the majority being in favour of a journey to the world, they abided by the former proposal. No one, however, being ambitious of undertaking such a task, it was resolved to leave the affair to chance. The lot fell upon the arch-devil Belphagor, who, previous to the Fall, had enjoyed the rank of archangel in a higher world. Though he received his commission with a very ill grace, he nevertheless felt himself constrained by Pluto’s imperial mandate, and prepared to execute whatever had been determined upon in council. At the same time he took an oath to observe the tenor of his instructions, as they had been drawn up with all due solemnity and ceremony for the purpose of his mission. These were to the following effect:—Imprimis, that the better to promote the object in view, he should be furnished with a hundred thousand gold ducats; secondly, that he should make use of the utmost expedition in getting into the world; thirdly, that after assuming the human form he should enter into the marriage state; and lastly, that he should live with his wife for the space of ten years. At the expiration of this period, he was to feign death and return home, in order to acquaint his employers, by the fruits of experience, what really were the respective conveniences and inconveniences of matrimony. The conditions further ran, that during the said ten years he should be subject to all kinds of miseries and disasters, like the rest of mankind, such as poverty, prisons, and diseases into which men are apt to fall, unless, indeed, he could contrive by his own skill and ingenuity to avoid them. Poor Belphagor having signed these conditions and received the money, forthwith came into the world, and having set up his equipage, with a numerous train of servants, he made a very splendid entrance into Florence. He selected this city in preference to all others, as being most favourable for obtaining an usurious interest of his money; and having assumed the name of Roderigo, a native of Castile, he took a house in the suburbs of Ognissanti. And because he was unable to explain the instructions under which he acted, he gave out that he was a merchant, who having had poor prospects in Spain, had gone to Syria, and succeeded in acquiring his fortune at Aleppo, whence he had lastly set out for Italy, with the intention of marrying and settling there, as one of the most polished and agreeable countries he knew.

Roderigo was certainly a very handsome man, apparently about thirty years of age, and he lived in a style of life that showed he was in pretty easy circumstances, if not possessed of immense wealth. Being, moreover, extremely affable and liberal, he soon attracted the notice of many noble citizens blessed with large families of daughters and small incomes. The former of these were soon offered to him, from among whom Roderigo chose a very beautiful girl of the name of Onesta, a daughter of Amerigo Donati, who had
also three sons, all grown up, and three more daughters, also nearly marriageable. Though of a noble family and enjoying a good reputation in Florence, his father-in-law was extremely poor, and maintained as poor an establishment. Roderigo, therefore, made very splendid nuptials, and omitted nothing that might tend to
confer honour upon such a festival, being liable, under the law which he received on leaving his infernal abode, to feel all kinds of vain and earthly passions. He therefore soon began to enter into all the pomps and vanities of the world, and to aim at reputation and consideration among mankind, which put him to no little expense. But more than this, he had not long enjoyed the society of his beloved Onesta, before he became tenderly attached to her, and was unable to behold her suffer the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now, along with her other gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had brought into the house of Roderigo such an insufferable portion of pride, that in this respect Lucifer himself could not equal her; for her husband, who had experienced the effects of both, was at no loss to decide which was the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became infinitely worse when she discovered the extent of Roderigo’s attachment to her, of which she availed herself to obtain an ascendancy over him and rule him with a rod of iron. Not content
with this, when she found he would bear it, she continued to annoy him with all kinds of insults and taunts, in such a way as to give him the most indescribable pain and uneasiness. For what with the influence of her father, her brothers, her friends, and relatives, the duty of the matrimonial yoke, and the love he bore her, he suffered all for some time with the patience of a saint. It would be useless to recount the follies and extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her taste for dress, and every article of the newest fashion, in which our city, ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual habits, so much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was obliged to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to furnish one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant, another with silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a goldbeater’s establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest part of his fortune was soon consumed. At length the
Carnival season was at hand; the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the whole city, as usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest families were about to vie with each other in the splendour of their parties, and the Lady Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by her acquaintance, insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in the richness of their feasts. For the reasons above stated, he submitted to her will; nor, indeed, would he have scrupled at doing much more, however difficult it might have been, could he have flattered himself with a hope of preserving the peace and comfort of his household, and of awaiting quietly the consummation of his ruin. But this was not the case, inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his wife had grown to such a height of asperity by long indulgence, that he was at a loss in what way to act. His domestics, male and female, would no longer remain in the house, being unable to support for any length of time the intolerable life they led. The inconvenience which he suffered in consequence of having no one to whom he could intrust his affairs it is impossible to express. Even his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with him, had already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than longer submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself, amidst this turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the ready money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of the returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being still in good credit, in order to support his rank he resorted to bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy speculators in that market. Just as his case became extremely delicate, there arrived sudden tidings both from East and West that one of his wife’s brothers had dissipated the whole of Roderigo’s profits in play, and that while the other was returning with a rich cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be wrecked, and he himself was lost. No sooner did this affair transpire than his creditors assembled, and supposing it must be all over with him, though their bills had not yet become due, they resolved to keep a strict watch over him in fear that he might abscond. Roderigo, on his part, thinking that there was no other remedy, and feeling how deeply he was bound by the Stygian law, determined at all hazards to make his escape. So taking horse one morning early, as he luckily lived near the Prato gate, in that direction he went off. His departure was soon known; the creditors were all in a bustle; the magistrates were applied to, and the officers of justice, along with a great part of the populace, were dispatched in pursuit. Roderigo had hardly proceeded a mile before he heard this hue and cry, and the pursuers were soon so close at his heels that the only resource he had left was to abandon the highroad and take to the open country, with the hope of concealing himself in the fields. But finding himself unable to make way over the hedges and ditches, he left his horse and took to his heels, traversing fields of vines and canes, until he reached Peretola, where he entered the house of Matteo del Bricca, a labourer of Giovanna del Bene. Finding him at home, for he was busily providing fodder for his cattle, our hero earnestly entreated him to save him from the hands of his adversaries close behind, who would infallibly starve him to death in a dungeon, engaging that if Matteo would give him refuge, he would make him one of the richest men alive, and afford him such proofs of it before he took his leave as would convince him of the truth of what he said; and if he failed to do this, he was quite content that Matteo himself should deliver him into the hands of his enemies.

Now Matteo, although a rustic, was a man of courage, and concluding that he could not lose anything by the speculation, he gave him his hand and agreed to save him. He then thrust our hero under a heap of rubbish, completely enveloping him in weeds; so that when his pursuers arrived they found themselves quite at a loss, nor could they extract from Matteo the least information as to his appearance. In this dilemma there was nothing left for them but to proceed in the pursuit, which they continued for two days, and then returned, jaded and disappointed, to Florence. In the meanwhile, Matteo drew our hero from his hiding-place, and begged him to fulfil his engagement. To this his friend Roderigo replied: “I confess, brother, that I am under great obligations to you, and I mean to return them. To leave no doubt upon your mind, I will inform you who I am;” and he proceeded to acquaint him with all the particulars of the affair: how he had come into the world, and married, and run away. He next described to his preserver the way in
which he might become rich, which was briefly as follows: As soon as Matteo should hear of some lady in the neighbourhood being said to be possessed, he was to conclude that it was Roderigo himself who had taken possession of her; and he gave him his word, at the same time, that he would never leave her until Matteo should come and conjure him to depart. In this way he might obtain what sum he pleased from the lady’s friends for the price of exorcizing her; and having mutually agreed upon this plan, Roderigo disappeared.

Not many days elapsed before it was reported in Florence that the daughter of Messer Ambrogio Amedei, a lady married to Buonajuto Tebalducci, was possessed by the devil. Her relations did not fail to apply every means usual on such occasions to expel him, such as making her wear upon her head St. Zanobi’s cap, and the cloak of St. John of Gualberto; but these had only the effect of making Roderigo laugh. And to convince them that it was really a spirit that possessed her, and that it was no flight of the imagination, he made the young lady talk Latin, hold a philosophical dispute, and reveal the frailties of many of her acquaintance. He particularly accused a certain friar of having introduced a lady into his monastery in male attire, to the no small scandal of all who heard it, and the astonishment of the brotherhood. Messer Ambrogio found it impossible to silence him, and began to despair of his daughter’s cure. But the news reaching Matteo, he lost no time in waiting upon Ambrogio, assuring him of his daughter’s recovery on condition of his paying him five hundred florins, with which to purchase a farm at Peretola. To this Messer Ambrogio consented; and Matteo immediately ordered a number of masses to be said, after which he proceeded with some unmeaning ceremonies calculated to give solemnity to his task. Then approaching the young lady, he whispered in her ear: “Roderigo, it is Matteo that is come. So do as we agreed upon, and get out.” Roderigo replied: “It is all well; but you have not asked enough to make you a rich man. So when I depart I will take possession of the daughter of Charles, king of Naples, and I will not leave her till you come. You may then demand whatever you please for your reward; and mind that you never trouble me again.” And when he had said this, he went out of the lady, to the no small delight and amazement of the whole city of Florence.

It was not long again before the accident that had happened to the daughter of the king of Naples began to be buzzed about the country, and all the monkish remedies having been found to fail, the king, hearing of Matteo, sent for him from Florence. On arriving at Naples, Matteo, after a few ceremonies, performed the cure. Before leaving the princess, however, Roderigo said: “You see, Matteo, I have kept my promise and made a rich man of you, and I owe you nothing now. So, henceforward you will take care to keep out of my way, lest as I have hitherto done you some good, just the contrary should happen to you in future.” Upon this Matteo thought it best to return to Florence, after receiving fifty thousand ducats from his majesty, in order to enjoy his riches in peace, and never once imagined that Roderigo would come in his way again. But in this he was deceived; for he soon heard that a daughter of Louis, king of France, was possessed by an evil spirit, which disturbed our friend Matteo not a little, thinking of his majesty’s great authority and of what Roderigo had said. Hearing of Matteo’s great skill, and finding no other remedy, the king dispatched a messenger for him, whom Matteo contrived to send back with a variety of excuses. But this did not long avail him; the king applied to the Florentine council, and our hero was compelled to attend. Arriving with no very pleasant sensations at Paris, he was introduced into the royal presence, when he assured his majesty that though it was true he had acquired some fame in the course of his demoniac practice, he could by no means always boast of success, and that some devils were of such a desperate character as not to pay the least attention to threats, enchantments, or even the exorcisms of religion itself. He would, nevertheless, do his majesty’s pleasure, entreating at the same time to be held excused if it should happen to prove an obstinate case. To this the king made answer, that be the case what it might, he would certainly hang him if he did not succeed. It is impossible to describe poor Matteo’s terror and perplexity on hearing these words; but at length mustering courage, he ordered the possessed princess to be brought into his presence. Approaching as usual close to her ear, he conjured Roderigo in the most humble terms, by all he had ever done for him, not to abandon him in such a dilemma, but to show some sense of gratitude for past services and to leave the princess. “Ah! thou traitorous villain!” cried Roderigo, “hast thou, indeed, ventured to meddle in this business? Dost thou boast thyself a rich man at my expense? I will now convince the world and thee of the extent of my power, both to give and to take away. I shall have the pleasure of seeing thee hanged before thou leavest this place.” Poor Matteo finding there was no remedy, said nothing more, but, like a wise man, set his head to work in order to discover some other means of expelling the spirit; for which purpose he said to the king, “Sire, it is as I feared: there are certain spirits of so malignant a character that there is no keeping any terms with them, and this is one of them. However, I will make a last attempt, and I trust that it will succeed according to our wishes. If not, I am in your majesty’s power, and I hope you will take compassion on my innocence. In the first place, I have to entreat that your majesty will order a large stage to be erected in the centre of the great square, such as will admit the nobility and clergy of the whole city. The stage ought to be adorned with all kinds of silks and with cloth of gold, and with an altar raised in the middle. Tomorrow morning I would have your majesty, with your full train of lords and ecclesiastics in attendance, seated in order and in magnificent array, as spectators of the scene at the said place. There, after having celebrated solemn mass, the possessed princess must appear; but I have in particular to entreat that on one side of the square may be stationed a band of men with drums, trumpets, horns, tambours, bagpipes, cymbals, and kettle-drums, and all other kinds of instruments that make the most infernal noise. Now, when I take my hat off, let the whole band strike up, and approach with the most horrid uproar towards the stage. This, along with a few other secret remedies which I shall apply, will surely compel the spirit to depart.”"

Mirrors of Chartres Street - William Faulkner

2011-04-24T02:04:00.000-07:00

Mirrors of Chartres Street by William Faulkner from New Orleans Sketches:

"His voice had the hoarseness of vocal cords long dried with alcohol, and he was crippled. I first noticed him when he swung himself across my path with apelike agility and demanded a quarter for bread. His gray thatch and his eyes as wild and soft as a faun's, his neck muscles moving as smooth as an athlete's to the thrust of his crutch, stopped me; his garrulous assurance—"Say, you are a young man now, and you got both legs. But some day you may need a bite of bread and a cup of coffee, just a cup of coffee, to keep the damp out of your bones; and you may stop a gentleman like I'm stopping you, and he may be my son—I was a good one in my day,
fellow." I had prided myself at the time on my appearance; that I did not look even like a prospective bum, wearing then tweeds which came from the Strand; but who knows what life may do to us? Anyway, to have such a breath fondly on one's neck in this nation and time was worth a quarter. Fifteen minutes later I saw him again, handily swinging himself into a movie theater where was one of those million-dollar pictures of dukes and adultery and champagne and lots of girls in mosquito netting and lamp shades.

Truly, his was an untrammelled spirit: his the same heaven-sent attribute for finding life good which enabled the Jews to give young Jesus of Nazareth with two stars in His eyes, sucking His mother's breast, and a fairy tale that has conquered the whole Western earth; which gave King Arthur to a dull world, and sent baron and knight and lads who had more than coronets to flap
pennons in Syria, seeking a dream. Later, from a railed balcony—Mendelssohn impervious in iron—I saw him for the last time. The moon had crawled up the sky like a fat spider and planes of light
and shadow were despair for the Vorticist schools. (Even those who carved those strange flat-handed creatures on the Temple of Rameses must have dreamed New Orleans by moonlight.)
About the symbolical stolidity of a cop he darted and spun on his crutch like a water beetle about a rock. His voice rose and fell, his crutch-end, arcing in the street lamp, described- a rectangle upon the pavement and within this rectangle he became motionless with one movement, like a bird alighting. "This is my room," he proclaimed hoarsely, "now, how ca;n you arrest me, huh?
Where's your warrant for entering my room, fellow?"
"I've sent for a warrant," the officer told him. "But I'll get you anyway. You can't stay there all night; you got to leave soon to get a drink."
"I got a drink on me, fellow, and you know it."
"Yeh? Where is it?"
" 'S all right," replied the other, cunningly, "you can't get it without a warrant."
The policeman leaned toward him, pawing at his sorry clothing. "Take your hands off me," he screamed. He stood miraculously on his single leg and his crutch spun about his head like a propeller blade. "Arrest me in my own room! Arrest me! Where's laws and justice? Ain't I a
member of greatest republic on earth? Ain't every laborer got his own home, and ain't this mine? Beat it, you damn Republican. Got a gov'ment job: thinks he can do whatever he wants," he informed the bystanders with hoarse cunning. He swept the crutch back to his armpit, and struck an attitude. "Listen, men. I was born American citizen and I been a good citizen all my life. When America needs men, who's first to say 'America, take me'? I am, until railroad cut off my leg. And did I do anything to railroad for cutting off my leg? Did I go to railroad president and say, 'Say, do you know you cut off my leg?' No, sir. I said I been good American citizen all my life—all my life I worked hard. I been laboring man, and ain't every laboring man got his own room, and ain't this mine? Now, I ask you, one gentleman to 'nother, can damn Republican come in laboring man's room and arrest him?" He turned again to the cop. "You big coward, come on and arrest me. I got no gun; can't shoot you if I wanted. Come in and arrest me! Come on, now, I dare you. Can't no Republican come in my room without a warrant." Down the street, clanging among the shivering golden wings of street lights, came the wagon at last. As it stopped at the curb, he hopped nimbly toward it. "Yes, sir," he croaked as he was helped in, "I'm American citizen and laboring man, but when a friend sends car for me, why, I'll go. Yes, sir, never refused a friend in my life, even if he's rich and I ain't nothing but self-respecting American citizen." Half-way in, he turned for recapitulation.

"I'm laboring man, own property in town, but I got rich friends. Sam Gompers was my friend; he
wouldn't stood by and let damn Republican arrest me, but now poor Sam's dead. Dead and gone, boys, but he was my friend, friend all laboring men." "Come on, come on," interrupted the officer. "All right, Ed." He was thrust abruptly in and the wagon clanged away. "So long, cap," he shouted back, the tires sucked over the wet pavement and around the corner; clanging from sight and sound he went, while his voice came hoarsely among the shadows and intermittent light.
"So long, cap." The policeman turned, his comfortably broad back looked [sic] in the light, passed to dark and from shadow to light again; then his heavy footfall faded away. And one thought of Caesar mounting his chariot among cast roses and the shouts of the rabble, and riving along the Via Appia while beggars crept out to see and centurions clashed their shields in the light of golden pennons flapping across the dawn."

A Russian beauty - Vladimir Nabokov

2011-04-23T02:42:00.000-07:00

The short story "A Russian beauty" by russian but multilingual author Vladimir Nabokov (yet i'll put him under the european label):

"Olga, of whom we are about to speak, was born in the year 1900, in a wealthy, carefree family of nobles. A pale little girl in a white sailor suit, with a side parting in her chestnut hair and such merry eyes that everyone kissed her there, she was deemed a beauty since childhood. The purity of her profile, the expression of her closed lips, the silkiness of her tresses that reached to the small of her back all this was enchanting indeed. Her childhood passed festively, securely, and gaily, as was the custom in our country since the days of old. A sunbeam falling on the cover of a Bibliotheque Rose volume at the family estate, the classical hoarfrost of the
Saint Petersburg public gardens A supply of memories, such as these, comprised her sole dowry when she left Russia in the spring of 1919.

Everything happened in full accord with the style or the period. Her mother died of typhus, her brother was executed by the firing squad. All these are ready-made formulae, of course, the usual dreary small talk, but it all did happen, there is no other way of saying it, and it's no use turning up your nose. Well, then, in 1919 we have a grown-up young lady, with a pale, broad face that overdid things in terms of the regularity of its features, but just the same very lovely. Tall, with soft breasts, she always wears a black jumper and a scarf around her white neck and holds an English cigarette in her slender-fingered hand with a prominent little bone just above the wrist. Yet there was a time in her life, at the end of 1916 or so, when at a summer resort near the family estate there was no schoolboy who did not plan to shoot himself because of her, there was no university stu-dent who would not... In a word, there had been a special magic about her, which, had it lasted, would have caused... would have wreaked... But somehow, nothing came of it. Things failed to develop, or else happened to no purpose. There were flowers that she was too lazy to put in a vase, there were strolls in the twilight now with this one, now with another, followed by the blind alley of a kiss.

She spoke French fluently, pronouncing lessens (the servants) as if rhyming with agence and splitting aout (August) in two syllables (a-ou). She naively translated the Russian grabezhi (robberies) as les grabuges (quarrels) and used some archaic French locutions that had somehow survived in old Russian families, but she rolled her r's most convincingly even though she had never been to France. Over the dresser in her Berlin room a postcard of Serov's portrait of the Tsar was fastened with a pin with a fake turquoise head. She was religious, but at times a fit of giggles would overcome her in church. She wrote verse with that terrifying facility typical of young Russian girls of her generation: patriotic verse, humorous verse, any kind of verse at all. For about six years, that is until 1926, she resided in a boarding-house on the Augsburgerstrasse (not far from the clock), together with her father, a broad shouldered,
beetle-browed old man with a yellowish mustache, and with tight, narrow trousers on his spindly legs. He had a job with some optimistic firm, was noted for his decency and kindness, and was never one to turn down a drink. In Berlin, Olga gradually acquired a large group of friends, all of them young Russians. A certain jaunty tone was established. "Let's go to the cinemonkey," or "That was a heely deely German Diele, dance hall." All sorts of popular sayings, cant phrases, imitations of imitations were much in demand. "These cutlets are grim." "I wonder who's kissing her now?" Or, in a hoarse, choking voice: "Messieurs les officiers..."

At the Zotovs', in their overheated rooms, she languidly danced the fox-trot to the sound of the gramophone, shifting the elongated calf of her leg not without grace and holding away from her the cigarette she had just finished smoking, and when her eyes located the ashtray that revolved with the music she would shove the butt into it, without missing a step. How charmingly, how meaningfully she could raise the wineglass to her lips, secretly drinking to the health of a third party as she looked through her lashes at the one who had confided in her. How she loved
to sit in the corner of the sofa, discussing with this person or that somebody else's affairs of the heart, the oscillation of chances, the probability of a declaration all this indirectly, by hints and how understanding her eyes would smile, pure, wide-open eyes with barely noticeable freckles on the thin, faintly bluish skin underneath and around them. But as for herself, no one fell in love with her, and this was why she long remembered the boor who pawed her at a charity
ball and afterwards wept on her bare shoulder. He was challenged to a duel by the little Baron R., but refused to fight. The word "boor," by the way, was used by Olga on any and every occasion. "Such boors," she would sing out in chest tones, languidly and affectionately. "What a boor..." "Aren't they boors?" But presently her life darkened. Something was finished, people were already getting up to leave.

How quickly! Her father died, she moved to another street. She stopped seeing her friends, knitted the little bonnets in fashion, and gave cheap French lessons at some ladies' club or other. In this way her life dragged on to the age of thirty. She was still the same beauty, with that enchanting slant of the widely spaced eyes and with that rarest line of lips into which the geometry of the smile seems to be already inscribed. But her hair lost its shine and was poorly cut. Her black tailored suit was in its fourth year. Her hands, with their glistening but untidy fingernails, were roped with veins and were shaking from nervousness and from her wretched continuous smoking. And we'd best pass over in silence the state of her stockings.... Now, when the silken insides of her handbag were in tatters (at least there was always the hope of finding a stray coin); now, when she was so tired; now, when putting on her only pair of shoes she had to force herself not to think of their soles, just as when, swallowing her pride, she entered the tobacconist's, she forbade herself to think of how much she already owed there; now that there was no longer the least hope of returning to Russia, and hatred had become so habitual that it almost ceased to be a sin; now that the sun was getting behind the chimney, Olga would occasionally be tormented by the luxury of certain advertisements, written in the saliva of Tantalus, imagining herself wealthy, wearing that dress, sketched with the aid of three or four insolent lines, on that ship-deck, under that palm tree, at the balustrade of that white terrace. And then there was also another thing or two that she missed. One day, almost knocking her off her feet, her one-time friend Vera rushed like a whirlwind out of a telephone booth, in a hurry as always, loaded with parcels, with a shaggy-eyed terrier whose leash immediately became wound twice around her skirt. She pounced upon Olga, imploring her to come and stay at their summer villa, saying that it was late itself, that it was wonderful and how have you been and are there many suitors. "No, my dear, I'm no longer that age," answered Olga, "and besides...." She added a little detail and Vera burst out laughing, letting her parcels sink almost to the ground. "No, seriously," said Olga, with a smile. Vera continued coaxing her, pulling at the terrier, turning this way and that. Olga, starting all at once to speak through her nose, borrowed some money from her. Vera adored arranging things, be it a party with punch, a visa, or a wedding. Now she avidly took up arranging Olga's fate. "The match maker within you
has been aroused," joked her husband, an elderly Balt (shaven head, monocle). Olga arrived on a bright August day. She was immediately dressed in one of Vera's frocks, her hairdo and make-up were changed. She swore languidly, but yielded, and how fes tively the floorboards creaked in the merry little villa!

How the little mirrors, suspended in the green orchard to frighten off birds, flashed and
sparkled! A Russified German named Forstmann, a well-off athletic widower, author of books on hunting, came to spend a week. He had long been asking Vera to find him a bride, "a real Russian beauty." He had a mas sive, strong nose with a fine pink vein on its high bridge. He was po lite, silent, at times even morose, but knew how to form, instantly and while no one noticed, an eternal friendship with a dog or with a child With his arrival Olga became difficult. Listless and irritable, she did all the wrong things and she knew that they were wrong. When the con
versation turned to old Russia (Vera tried to make her show off her past), it seemed to her that everything she said was a lie and that ev eryone understood that it was a lie, and therefore she stubbornly re fused to say the things that Vera was trying to extract from her and in general would not cooperate in any way. On the veranda, they would slam their cards down hard. Everyone would go off together for a stroll through the woods, but Forstmann conversed mostly with Vera's husband, and, recalling some pranks of their youth, the two of them would turn red with laughter, lag behind, and collapse on the moss. On the eve of Forstmann's departure they were playing cards on the veranda, as they usually did in the evening. Suddenly, Olga felt an impossible spasm in her throat. She still man aged to smile and to leave without undue haste. Vera knocked on her door but she did not open. In the middle of the night, having swatted a multitude of sleepy flies and smoked continuously to the point where she was no longer able to inhale, irritated, depressed, hating herself and everyone, Olga went into the garden. There, the crickets stridu lated, the branches swayed, an occasional apple fell with a taut thud, and the moon performed calisthenics on the whitewashed wall of the chicken coop.

Early in the morning, she came out again and sat down on the porch step that was already hot. Forstmann, wearing a dark blue bath robe, sat next to her and, clearing his throat, asked if she would consent to become his spouse�that was the very word he used: "spouse." When they came to breakfast, Vera, her husband, and his maiden cousin, in utter silence, were performing nonexistent dances, each in a different corner, and Olga drawled out in an affectionate voice "What boors!" and next summer she died in childbirth. That's all. Of course, there may be some sort of sequel, but it is not known to me. In such cases, instead of getting bogged down in guesswork, I repeat the words of the merry king in my favorite fairy tale: Which arrow flies forever? The arrow that has hit its mark."

Shadow, A Parable - Edgar Allan Poe

2011-04-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

A small parable by Poe, one of his best: Shadow, A Parable by Edgar Allan Poe:

Yea! though I walk through
the valley of the Shadow.
—Psalm of David

"Ye who read are still still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets—but the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account—things material and spiritual—heaviness in the atmosphere—a sense of suffocation— anxiety—and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs—upon the household furniture—upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby—all things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way—which was hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon - which are madness; and drank deeply—although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus.

Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded;—the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes, in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and, gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadow—a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven, might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass.

But the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor God—neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.” And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends."

A Fratricide - Franz Kafka

2011-04-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

It's really not of much use to add anything to Kafka's writings, as you all know, but I would like to mention this fact: it's the 1920s, the political discussions are at rise, the socio-political environment is pending between the immediate struggle for authority in the more and more bureaucratization of institutions. Kafka's stories are one's fight and also play with the irrational that lurks in the most rational way of life - the rational-bureaucratized-state. A Fratricide by Franz Kafka:

"The evidence shows that this is how the murder was committed:
Schmar, the murderer, took up his post about nine o'clock one night in clear moonlight by the corner where Wese, his victim, had to turn from the street where his office was into the street he lived in. The night air was shivering cold. Yet Schmar was wearing only a thin blue suit; the
jacket was unbuttoned, too. He felt no cold; besides, he was moving about all the time. His weapon, half a bayonet and half a kitchen knife, he kept firmly in his grasp, quite naked. He looked at the knife against the light of the moon; the blade glittered; not enough for Schmar; he struck it against the bricks of the pavement till the sparks flew; regretted that, perhaps; and to repair the damage drew it like a violin bow across his boot sole while he bent forward, standing on one leg, and listened both to the whetting of the knife on his boot and for any sound out of the fateful side street. Why did Pallas, the private citizen who was watching it all from his window near by in the second story, permit it to happen? Unriddle the mysteries of human nature! With his collar turned up, his dressing gown girt round his portly body, he stood looking down, shaking his head.

And five houses farther along, on the opposite side of the street, Mrs. Wese, with a foxfur coat over her nightgown, peered out to look for her husband who was lingering unusually late tonight.
At last there rang out the sound of the doorbell before Wese's office, too loud for a doorbell, right over the town and up to heaven, and Wese, the industrious nightworker, issued from the building, still invisible in that street, only heralded by the sound of the bell; at once the pavement registered his quiet footsteps. Pallas bent far forward; he dared not miss anything. Mrs. Wese, reassured by the bell, shut her window with a clatter. But Schmar knelt down; since he had no other parts of his body bare, he pressed only his face and his hands against the pavement; where everything else was freezing, Schmar was glowing hot.
At the very corner dividing the two streets Wese paused; only his walking stick came round into the other street to support him. A sudden whim. The night sky invited him, with its dark blue and its gold. Unknowing, he gazed up at it, unknowing he lifted his hat and stroked his hair; nothing up there drew together in a pattern to interpret the immediate future for him; everything stayed in its senseless, inscrutable place. In itself it was a highly reasonable action that Wese should walk on, but he walked on to Schmar's knife.
"2!" shrieked Schmar, standing on tiptoe, his arm outstretched, the knife sharply lowered, "Wese! You will never see Julia again!" And right into the throat and left into the throat and a
third time deep into the belly stabbed Schmar's knife. Water rats, slit open, give out such a sound as came from Wese. "Done," said Schmar, and pitched the knife, now superfluous blood-stained ballast, against the nearest house front. "The bliss of murder! The relief, the soaring ecstasy from the shedding of another's blood! Wese, old nightbird, friend, alehouse crony, you are oozing away into the dark earth below the street. Why aren't you simply a bladder of blood so that I could stamp on you and make you vanish into nothingness? Not all we want comes true, not all the dreams that blossomed have borne fruit; your solid remains lie here, already indifferent to every kick. What's the good of the dumb question you are asking?"

Pallas, choking on the poison in his body, stood at the double-leafed door of his house as it flew open. "Schmay! Schmar! I saw it all, I missed nothing." Pallas and Schmar scrutinized each other. The result of the scrutiny satisfied Pallas; Schmar came to no conclusion. Mrs. Wese, with a crowd of people on either side, came rushing up, her face grown quite old with the shock. Her fur coat swung open, she collapsed on top of Wese; the nightgowned body belonged to Wese, the fur coat spreading over the couple like the smooth turf of a grave belonged to the crowd.
Schmar, fighting down with difficulty the last of his nausea, pressed his mouth against the shoulder of the policeman who, stepping lightly, led him away."

The Devil in a Nunnery - Francis Oscar Mann

2011-04-22T01:06:00.000-07:00

A european medieval short story implicating religion (duh, it's the middle ages), a nunnery and The Devil. The Devil in a Nunnery - Francis Oscar Mann:

"Buckingham is as pleasant a shire as a man shall see on a seven days’ journey. Neither was it any less pleasant in the days of our Lord King Edward, the third of that name, he who fought and put the French to shameful discomfiture at Crecy and Poitiers and at many another hard-fought field. May God rest his soul, for he now sleeps in the great Church at Westminster. Buckinghamshire is full of smooth round hills and woodlands of hawthorn and beech, and it is a famous country for its brooks and shaded waterways running through the low hay meadows. Upon its hills feed a thousand sheep, scattered like the remnants of the spring snow, and it was from these that the merchants made themselves fat purses, sending the wool into Flanders in exchange for silver crowns. There were many strong castles there too, and rich abbeys, and the King’s Highway ran through it from North to South, upon which the pilgrims went in crowds to worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban.

Thereon also rode noble knights and stout men-at-arms, and these you could follow with the eye by their glistening armour, as they wound over hill and dale, mile after mile, with shining spears and shields and fluttering pennons, and anon a trumpet or two sounding the same keen note as that which rang out dreadfully on those bloody fields of France. The girls used to come to the cottage doors or run to hide themselves in the wayside woods to see them go trampling by; for Buckinghamshire girls love a soldier above all men. Nor, I warrant you, were jolly friars lacking in the highways and the by-ways and under the hedges, good men of religion, comfortable of penance and easy of life, who could tip a wink to a housewife, and drink and crack a joke with the good man, going on their several ways with tight paunches, skins full of ale and a merry salutation for every one. A fat pleasant land was this Buckinghamshire; always plenty to eatand drink therein, and pretty girls and lusty fellows; and God knows what more a man can expect in a world where all is vanity, as the Preacher truly says.

There was a nunnery at Maids Moreton, two miles out from Buckingham Borough, on the road to Stony Stratford, and the place was called Maids Moreton because of the nunnery. Very devout creatures were the nuns, being holy ladies out of families of gentle blood. They punctually fulfilled to the letter all the commands of the pious founder, just as they were blazoned on the great parchment Regula, which the Lady Mother kept on her reading-desk in her little cell. If ever any of the nuns, by any hance or subtle machination of the Evil One, was guilty of the smallest backsliding from the conduct that beseemed them, they made full and devout confession thereof to the Holy Father who visited them for this purpose. This good man loved swan’s meat and galingale, and the charitable nuns never failed to provide of their best for him on his visiting days; and whatsoever penance he laid upon them they performed to the utmost, and with due contrition of heart.

From Matins to Compline they regularly and decently carried out the services of Holy Mother Church. After dinner, one read aloud to them from the Rule, and again after supper there was reading from the life of some notable Saint or Virgin, that thereby they might find ensample for themselves on their own earthly pilgrimage. For the rest, they tended their herb garden, reared their chickens, which were famous for miles around, and kept strict watch over their haywards and swineherds. If time was when they had nothing more important on hand, they set to and made the prettiest blood bandages imaginable for the Bishop, the Bishop’s Chaplain, the Archdeacon, the neighbouring Abbot and other godly men of religion round about, who were forced often to bleed themselves for their health’s sake and their eternal salvation, so that these venerable men in process of time came to have by them great chests full of these useful articles. If little tongues wagged now and then as the sisters sat at their sewing in the great hall, who shall blame them, Eva peccatrice? Not I; besides, some of them were something stricken in years, and old women are garrulous and hard to be constrained from chattering and gossiping. But being devout women they could have spoken no evil.

One evening after Vespers all these good nuns sat at supper, the Abbess on her high dais and the nuns ranged up and down the hall at the long trestled tables. The Abbess had just said “Gratias” and the sisters had sung “Qui vivit et regnat per omnia saecula saeculorum, Amen,” when in came the Manciple mysteriously, and, with many deprecating bows and outstretchings of the hands, sidled himself up upon the dais, and, permission having been given him, spoke to the Lady Mother thus:
“Madam, there is a certain pilgrim at the gate who asks refreshment and a night’s lodging.” It is true he spoke softly, but little pink ears are sharp of hearing, and nuns, from their secluded way of life, love to hear news of the great world.
“Send him away,” said the Abbess. “It is not fit that a man should lie within this house.”
“Madam, he asks food and a bed of straw lest he should starve of hunger and exhaustion on his way to do penance and worship at the Holy Shrine of the Blessed Saint Alban.”
“What kind of pilgrim is he?”
“Madam, to speak truly, I know not; but he appears of a reverend and gracious aspect, a young man well spoken and well disposed. Madam knows it waxeth late, and the ways are dark and foul.”
“I would not have a young man, who is given to pilgrimages and good works, to faint and starve by the wayside. Let him sleep with the haywards.”
“But, Madam, he is a young man of goodly appearance and conversation; saving your reverence, I would not wish to ask him to eat and sleep with churls.”
“He must sleep without. Let him, however, enter and eat of our poor table.”
“Madam, I will strictly enjoin him what you command. He hath with him, however, an instrument of music and would fain cheer you with spiritual songs.” A little shiver of anticipation ran down the benches of the great hall, and the nuns fell to whispering.
“Take care, Sir Manciple, that he be not some light juggler, a singer of vain songs, a mocker. I would not have these quiet halls disturbed by wanton music and unholy words. God forbid.” And she crossed herself.
“Madam, I will answer for it.”
The Manciple bowed himself from the dais and went down the middle of the hall, his keys rattling at his belt. A little buzz of conversation rose from the sisters and went up to the oak roof-trees, like the singing of bees. The Abbess told her beads. The hall door opened and in came the pilgrim. God knows what manner of man he was; I cannot tell you. He certainly was lean and lithe like a cat, his eyes danced in his head like the very devil, but his cheeks and jaws were as bare of flesh as any hermit’s that lives on roots and ditchwater. His yellow-hosed legs went like the tune of a May game, and he screwed and twisted his scarlet-jerkined body in time with them. In his left hand he held a cithern, on which he twanged with his right, making a cunning noise that titillated the back-bones of those who heard it, and teased every delicate nerve in the body. Such a tune would have tickled the ribs of Death himself. A queer fellow to go pilgrimaging certainly, but why, when they saw him, all the young nuns tittered and the old nuns grinned, until they showed their red gums, it is hard to tell. Even the Lady Mother on the dais smiled, though she tried to frown a moment later.

The pilgrim stepped lightly up to the dais, the infernal devil in his legs making the nuns think of the games the village folk play all night in the churchyard on Saint John’s Eve.
“Gracious Mother,” he cried, bowing deeply and in comely wise, “allow a poor pilgrim on his way to confess and do penance at the shrine of Saint Alban to take food in your hall, and to rest with the haywards this night, and let me thereof make some small recompense with a few sacred numbers, such as your pious founder would not have disdained to hear.”
“Young man,” returned the Abbess, “right glad am I to hear that God has moved thy heart to godly works and to go on pilgrimages, and verily I wish it may be to thy soul’s health and to the respite of thy pains hereafter. I am right willing that thou shouldst refresh thyself with meat and rest at this holy place.”
“Madam, I thank thee from my heart, but as some slight token of gratitude for so large a favour, let me, I pray thee, sing one or two of my divine songs, to the uplifting of these holy Sisters’ hearts.” Another burst of chatter, louder than before, from the benches in the hall. One or two of the younger Sisters clapped their plump white hands and cried, “Oh!” The Lady Abbess held up her hand for silence.

“Verily, I should be glad to hear some sweet songs of religion, and I think it would be to the uplifting of these Sisters’ hearts. But, young man, take warning against singing any wanton lines of vain imagination, such as the ribalds use on the highways, and the idlers and haunters of taverns. I have heard them in my youth, although my ears tingle to think of them now, and I should think it shame that any such light words should echo among these sacred rafters or disturb the slumber of our pious founder, who now sleeps in Christ. Let me remind you of what saith Saint Jeremie, Onager solitarius, in desiderio animae suae, attraxit ventum amoris; the wild ass of the wilderness, in the desire of his heart, snuffeth up the wind of love; whereby that holy man signifies that vain earthly love, which is but wind and air, and shall avail nothing at all, when this weak, impure flesh is sloughed away.”

“Madam, such songs as I shall sing, I learnt at the mouth of our holy parish priest, Sir Thomas, a man of all good learning and purity of heart.”
“In that case,” said the Abbess, “sing in God’s name, but stand at the end of the hall, for it suits not the dignity of my office a man should stand so near this dais.” Whereon the pilgrim, making obeisance, went to the end of the hall, and the eyes of all the nuns danced after his dancing legs, and their ears hung on the clear, sweet notes he struck out of his cithern as he walked. He took his place with his back against the great hall door, in such attitude as men use when they play the cithern. A little trembling ran through the nuns, and some rose from their seats and knelt on the benches, leaning over the table, the better to see and hear him. Their eyes sparkled like dew on meadowsweet on a fair morning.

Certainly his fingers were bewitched or else the devil was in his cithern, for such sweet sounds had never been heard in the hall since the day when it was built and consecrated to the service of the servants of God. The shrill notes fell like a tinkling rain from the high roof in mad, fantastic trills and dying falls that brought all one’s soul to one’s lips to suck them in. What he sang about, God only knows; not one of the nuns or even the holy Abbess herself could have told you, although you had offered her a piece of the True Cross or a hair of the Blessed Virgin for a single word. But a divine yearning filled all their hearts; they seemed to hear ten thousand thousand angels singing in choruses, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia; they floated up on impalpable clouds of azure and silver, up through the blissful paradises of the uppermost heaven; their nostrils were filled with the odours of exquisite spices and herbs and smoke of incense; their eyes dazzled at splendours and lights and glories; their ears were full of gorgeous harmonies and all reated concords of sweet sounds; the very fibres of being were loosened within them, as though their souls would leap forth from their bodies in exquisite dissolution. The eyes of the younger nuns grew round and large and tender, and their breath almost died upon their velvet lips. As for the old nuns, the great, salt tears coursed down their withered cheeks and fell like rain on their gnarled hands. The Abbess sat on her dais with her lips apart, looking into space, ten thousand thousand miles away. But no one saw her and she saw no one; every one had forgotten every one else in that delicious intoxication.

Then with a shrill cry, full of human yearnings and desire, the minstrel came to a sudden stop—
“Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
And the small rain will down rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.”
Silence!—not one of the holy Sisters spoke, but some sighed; some put their hands over their hearts, and one put her hand in her hood, but when she felt her hair shorn close to her scalp, drew it out again sharply, as though she had touched red-hot iron, and cried, “O Jesu.”
Sister Peronelle, a toothless old woman, began to speak in a cracked, high voice, quickly and monotonously, as though she spoke in a dream. Her eyes were wet and red, and her thin lips trembled. “God knows,” she said, “I loved him; God knows it. But I bid all those who be maids here, to be mindful of the woods. For they are green, but they are deep and dark, and it is merry in the springtime with the thick turf below and the good boughs above, all alone with your heart’s darling—all alone in the green wood. But God help me, he would not stay any more than snow at Easter. I thought just now that I was back with him in the woods. God keep all those that be maids from the green woods.” The pretty Sister Ursula, who had only just finished her novitiate, was as white as a sheet. Her breath came thickly and quick as though she bore a great burden up hill. A great sigh made her comely shoulders rise and fall. “Blessed Virgin,” she cried. “Ah, ye ask too much; I did not know; God help me, I did not know,” and her grey eyes filled with sudden tears, and she dropped her head on her arms on the table, and sobbed aloud. Then cried out Sister Katherine, who looked as old and dead as a twig dropped from a tree of last autumn, and at whom the younger Sisters privily mocked, “It is the wars, the wars, the cursed wars. I have held his head in this lap, I tell you; I have kissed his soul into mine. But now he lies dead, and his pretty limbs all dropped away into earth. Holy Mother, have pity on me. I shall never kiss his sweet lips again or look into his jolly eyes. My heart is broken long since. Holy Mother! Holy Mother!”
“He must come oftener,” said a plump Sister of thirty, with a little nose turned up at the end, eyes black as sloes and lips round as a plum. “I go to the orchard day after day, and gather my lap full of apples. He is my darling. Why does he not come? I look for him every time that I gather the ripe apples. He used to come; but that was in the spring, and Our Lady knows that is long ago. Will it not be spring again soon? I have gathered many ripe apples.” Sister Margarita rocked herself to and fro in her seat and crossed her arms on her breast. She was singing quietly to herself.

“Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little child,
Lulla, lullay, lullay;
Suck at my breast that am thereat beguiled,
Lulla, lullay, lullay.”

She moaned to herself, “I have seen the village women go to the well, carrying their babies with them, and they laugh as they go by on the way. Their babies hold them tight round the neck, and their mothers comfort them, saying,
‘Hey, hey, my little son; hey, hey, my sweeting.’
Christ and the blessed Saints know that I have never felt a baby’s little hand in my bosom—and now I shall die without it, for I am old and past the age of bearing children.”
“Lulla, lullay, thou tiny little boy,
Lulla, lullay, lullay;
To feel thee suck doth soothe my great annoy,
Lulla, lullay, lullay.”
“I have heard them on a May morning, with their pipes and tabors and jolly, jolly music,” cried Sister Helen; “I have seen them too, and my heart has gone with them to bring back the white hawthorn from the woods. ‘A man and a maid to a hawthorn bough,’ as it says in the song. They sing outside my window all Saint John’s Eve so that I cannot say my prayers for the wild thoughts they put into my brain, as they go dancing up and down in the churchyard; I cannot forget the pretty words they say to each other, ‘Sweet love, a kiss’; ‘kiss me, my love, nor let me go’; ‘As I went through the garden gate’; ‘A bonny black knight, a bonny black knight, and what will you give to me? A kiss, and a kiss, and
no more than a kiss, under the wild rose tree.’ Oh, Mary Mother, have pity on a poor girl’s heart, I shall die, if no one love me, I shall die.”
“In faith, I am truly sorry, William,” said Sister Agnes, who was gaunt and hollow-eyed with long vigils and overfasting, for which the good father had rebuked her time after time, saying that she overtasked the poor weak flesh. “I am truly sorry that I could not wait. But the neighbours made such a clamour, and my father and mother buffeted me too sorely. It is under the oak tree, no more than a foot deep, and covered with the red and brown leaves. It was a pretty sight to see the red blood on its neck, as white as whalebone, and it neither cried nor wept, so I put it down among the leaves, the pretty poppet; and it was like thee, William, it was like thee. I am sorry I did not wait, and now I’m worn and wan for thy sake, this many a long year, and all in vain, for thou never comst. I am an old woman now, and I shall soon be quiet and not complain any more.”

Some of the Sisters were sobbing as if their hearts would break; some sat quiet and still, and let the tears fall from their eyes unchecked; some smiled and cried together; some sighed a little and trembled like aspen leaves in a southern wind. The great candles in the hall were burning down to their sockets. One by one they spluttered out. A ghostly, flickering light fell upon the legend over the broad dais, “Connubium mundum sed virginitas paradisum complet”—“Marriage replenisheth the World, but virginity Paradise.” “Dong, dong, dong.” Suddenly the great bell of the Nunnery began to toll. With a cry the Abbess sprang to her feet; there were tear stains on her white cheeks, and her hand shook as she pointed fiercely to the door. “Away, false pilgrim,” she cried. “Silence, foul blasphemer! Retro me, Satanas.” She crossed herself again and again, saying Pater Noster. The nuns screamed and trembled with terror. A little cloud of blue smoke arose from where the minstrel had stood. There was a little tongue of flame, and he had disappeared. It was almost dark in the hall. A few sobs broke the silence. The dying light of a single candle fell on the form of the Lady Mother. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we shall fast and sing Placebo and Dirige and the Seven Penitential Psalms. May the Holy God have mercy upon us for all we have done and said and thought amiss this night. Amen.”"

The Ant and the Grasshopper

2011-04-21T02:20:00.000-07:00

A good part of the success of his stories derives from the technique that Maugham used. He discussed this in the preface to the first American edition of his collected short stories and compared it with the contrasting techniques of Chekhov and de Maupassant. Chekhov had markedly superior characterisation, he said, but de Maupassant did give his short stories a beginning, a middle and an end–which Maugham approved, and which is the key to his style: ‘My prepossessions in the arts are on the side of law and order. I like a story that fits.’ Such was his answer to critics who had applied the word ‘competent’ to his stories, disparagingly as they thought–and, judging by the stories’ vast and continuing popularity, unwisely. - from the William Heinemann Limited edition introduction.
The Ant and the Grasshopper by William Somerset Maugham:

"When I was a very small boy I was made to learn by heart certain of the fables of La Fontaine, and the moral of each was carefully explained to me. Among those I learnt was The Ant and The Grasshopper which is devised to bring home to the young the useful lesson that in an imperfect world industry is rewarded and giddiness punished. In this admirable fable (I apologize for telling something which everyone is politely, but inexactly, supposed to know) the ant spends a laborious summer gathering its winter store, while the grasshopper sits on a blade of grass singing to the sun. Winter comes and the ant is comfortably provided for, but the grasshopper has an empty larder: he goes to the ant and begs for a little food. Then the ant gives him her classic answer:

‘What were you doing in the summer time?’
‘Saving your presence, I sang, I sang all day, all night.’
‘You sang. Why, then go and dance.’
I do not ascribe it to perversity on my part, but rather to the inconsequence of childhood, which is deficient in moral sense, that I could never quite reconcile myself to the lesson. My sympathies were with the grasshopper and for some time I never saw an ant without putting my foot on it. In this summary (and as I have discovered since, entirely human) fashion I sought to express my disapproval of prudence and common sense. I could not help thinking of this fable when the other day I saw George Ramsay lunching by himself in a restaurant. I never saw anyone wear an expression of such deep gloom. He was staring into space. He looked as though the burden of the whole world sat on his shoulders. I was sorry for him: I suspected at once that his unfortunate brother had been causing trouble again. I went up to him and held out my hand.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m not in hilarious spirits,’ he answered.
‘Is it Tom again?’
He sighed.
‘Yes, it’s Tom again.’
‘Why don’t you chuck him? You’ve done everything in the world for him. You must know by now that he’s quite hopeless.’ I suppose every family has a black sheep. Tom had been a sore trial to his for twenty years. He had begun life decently enough: he went into business, married, and had two children. The Ramsays were perfectly respectable people and there was every reason to suppose that Tom Ramsay would have a useful and honourable career. But one day, without warning, he announced that he didn’t like work and that he wasn’t suited for marriage. He wanted to enjoy himself. He would listen to no expostulations. He left his wife and his office. He had a little money and he spent two happy years in the various capitals of Europe. Rumours of his doings reached his relations from time to time and they were profoundly shocked. He certainly had a very good time. They shook their heads and asked what would happen when his money was spent. They soon found out: he borrowed. He was charming and unscrupulous. I have never met anyone to whom it was more difficult to refuse a loan. He made a steady income from his friends and he made friends easily. But he always said that the money you spent on necessities was boring; the money that was amusing to spend was the money you spent on luxuries. For this he depended on his brother George. He did not waste his charm on him. George was a serious man and insensible to such enticements. George was respectable. Once or twice he fell to Tom’s promises of amendment and gave him considerable sums in order that he might make a fresh start. On these Tom bought a
motor–car and some very nice jewellery. But when circumstances forced George to realize that his brother would never settle down and he washed his hands of him, Tom, without a qualm, began to blackmail him. It was not very nice for a respectable lawyer to find his brother shaking cocktails behind the bar of his favourite restaurant or to see him waiting on the box–seat of a taxi outside his club.

Tom said that to serve in a bar or to drive a taxi was a perfectly decent occupation, but if George could oblige him with a couple of hundred pounds he didn’t mind for the honour of the family giving it up. George paid. Once Tom nearly went to prison. George was terribly upset. He went into the whole discreditable affair. Really Tom had gone too far. He had been wild, thoughtless, and selfish, but he had never before done anything dishonest, by which George meant illegal; and if he were prosecuted he would assuredly be convicted. But you cannot allow your only brother to go to gaol. The man Tom had cheated, a man called Cronshaw, was vindictive. He was determined to take the matter into court; he said Tom was a scoundrel and should be punished. It cost George an infinite deal of trouble and five hundred pounds to settle the affair. I have never seen him in such a rage as when he heard that Tom and Cronshaw had gone off together to Monte Carlo the moment they cashed the cheque. They spent a happy month there. For twenty years Tom raced and gambled, philandered with the prettiest girls, danced, ate in the most expensive restaurants, and dressed beautifully. He always looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox. Though he was forty–six you would never have taken him for more than thirty–five. He was a most amusing companion and though you knew he was perfectly worthless you could not but enjoy his society. He had high spirits, an unfailing gaiety, and incredible charm. I never grudged the contributions he regularly levied on me for the necessities of his existence. I never lent him fifty pounds without feeling that I was in his debt. Tom Ramsay knew everyone and everyone knew Tom Ramsay. You could not approve of him, but you could not help liking him.
Poor George, only a year older than his scapegrace brother, looked sixty. He had never taken more than a fortnight’s holiday in the year for a quarter of a century. He was in his office every morning at nine–thirty and never left it till six. He was honest, industrious, and worthy. He had a good wife, to whom he had never been unfaithful even in thought, and four daughters to whom he was the best of fathers. He made a point of saving a third of his income and his plan was to retire at fifty–five to a little house in the country where he proposed to cultivate his garden and play golf. His life was blameless.

He was glad that he was growing old because Tom was growing old too. He rubbed his hands and said:
‘It was all very well when Tom was young and good–looking, but he’s only a year younger than I am. In four years he’ll be fifty. He won’t find life so easy then. I shall have thirty thousand pounds by the time I’m fifty. For twenty–five years I’ve said that Tom would end in the gutter. And we shall see how he likes that. We shall see if it really pays best to work or be idle.’
Poor George! I sympathized with him. I wondered now as I sat down beside him what infamous thing Tom had done. George was evidently very much upset.
‘Do you know what’s happened now?’ he asked me.
I was prepared for the worst. I wondered if Tom had got into the hands of the police at last. George could hardly bring himself to speak.
‘You’re not going to deny that all my life I’ve been hardworking, decent, respectable, and straightforward. After a life of industry and thrift I can look forward to retiring on a small income in gilt–edged securities. I’ve always done my duty in that state of life in which it has pleased Providence to place me.’
‘True.’
‘And you can’t deny that Tom has been an idle, worthless, dissolute, and dishonourable rogue. If there were any justice he’d be in the workhouse.’
‘True.’
George grew red in the face.
‘A few weeks ago he became engaged to a woman old enough to be his mother. And now she’s died and left him everything she had. Half a million pounds, a yacht, a house in London, and a house in the country.’
George Ramsay beat his clenched fist on the table.
‘It’s not fair, I tell you, it’s not fair. Damn it, it’s not fair.’
I could not help it. I burst into a shout of laughter as I looked at George’s wrathful face, I rolled in my chair, I very nearly fell on the floor. George never forgave me. But Tom often asks me to excellent dinners in his charming house in Mayfair, and if he occasionally borrows a trifle from me, that is merely from force of habit. It is never more than a sovereign."

The story of Muhammad Din

2011-04-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

A classic Rudyard Kipling short fiction Indian story. The story of Muhammad Din:

Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home, little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying.
—Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.

"The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was cleaning for me. "Does the Heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din, deferentially. The Heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a polo-ball to a khitmatgar? "By your Honor's favor, I have a little son. He has seen this ball, and desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself." No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting to play with polo-balls. He carried out the battered thing into the veranda; and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter of small feet, and the thud-thud-thud of the ball rolling along the ground. Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to secure his treasure. But how had he managed to see that
polo-ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, halfway down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the "little son." He had no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground with a gasp. His eyes opened, and his mouth followed suit. I knew what was coming, and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the servants' quarters far more quickly than
any command of mine had ever done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonishing the small sinner who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief. "This boy," said Imam Din, judicially, "is a budmash—a big budmash. He will, without doubt, go to the jail-khana for his behavior." Renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apologyto myself from Imam Din.

"Tell the baby," said I, "that the Sahib is not angry, and take him away." Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had now gathered all his shirt round his neck, stringwise, and the yell subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. "His name," said Imam Din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is Muhammad Din, and he is a budmash." Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned round in his father's arms, and said gravely, "It is true that my name is Muhammad Din, Tahib, but I am not a budmash. I am a man!"
From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did he come into my dining-room, but on the neutral ground of the garden, we greeted each other with much state, though
our conversation was confined to "Talaam, Tahib" from his side, and "Salaam, Muhammad Din" from mine. Daily on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be slurred over or given unseemly.

Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down the grounds. He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six shriveled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Outside that circle again was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole
bounded by a little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure my garden.
Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work then or later; but, that evening, a stroll through the garden brought me unawares full on it; so that I trampled, before I knew, marigoldheads, dust-bank, and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past all hope of mending. Next morning, I came upon Muhammad Din crying softly to himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly told him that the Sahib was very angry with him for spoiling the garden, and had scattered his rubbish, using bad language the while. Muhammad Din labored for an hour at effacing every trace of the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful and apologetic face that he said "Talaam, Tahib," when I came home from office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad Din that, by my singular favor, he was permitted to disport himself as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball creation. For some months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls—always alone, and always crooning to himself.

A gaily-spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of his little buildings; and I looked that Muhammad Din should build something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was I disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in the dust. It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never completed. Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive, and no "Talaam, Tahib" to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day Imam Din told me that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine. He got the medicine, and an English Doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the Doctor, as he left Imam Din's quarters. A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a
white cloth, all that was left of little Muhammad Din."

Glossolalia

2011-04-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

"Glossolalia" is one of John Barth's most surreal or taste-of-magical-realism short story, also one of his most criticized works, mainly because of it's unnatural and out-of-this-world strangeness. So here's Glossolalia (which I find very interesting and mindf'ing) by John Barth

"Still breathless from fending Phoebus, suddenly I see all- and all in vain. A horse excreting Greeks will devour my city; none will heed her Apollo loved, and endowed with clear sight, and cursed when she gainsaid him. My honor thus costlily purchased will be snatched from me by soldiers. I see Agamemnon, my enslaver, meeting death in Mycenae. No more.

Dear Procne: your wretched sister- she it is weaves this robe. Regard it well: it hides her painful tale in its pointless patterns. Tereus came and fetched her off; he conveyed her to Thrace . . . but not to see her sister. He dragged her deep into the forest, where he shackled her and raped her. Her tongue he then severed, and concealed her, and she warbles for vengeance, and death.

I Crispus, a man of Corinth, yesterday looked on God. Today I rave. What things my eyes have seen can't be scribed or spoken. All think I praise His sacred name, take my horror for hymns, my blasphemies for raptures. The holy writ's wrongly deciphered, as beatitudes and blessings; in truth those are curses, maledictions, and obscenest commandments. So be it.

Sweet Sheba, beloved highness: Solomon craves your throne! Beware his craft; he mistranslates my pain into cunning counsel. Hear what he claims your hoopoe sang: that its mistress the Queen no longer worships Allah! He bids you come now to his palace, to be punished for your error. . . . But mine was a love song: how I'd hymn you, if his tongue weren't beyond me- and yours.

Ed' pélut', kondó nedóde, ímba imbá imbá. Singé erú. Orúmo ímbo ímpe ruté sceléte. Ímpe re scéle lee lutó.

Ombo té scele té, beré te kúre kúre. Sinté te lúté sinte kúru, te rumete tau ruméte. Onkó keere scéte, tere lúte, ilee léte leel' lúto. Scélé.

Ill fortune, constraint and terror, generate guileful art; despair inspires. The laureled clairvoyants tell our doom in riddles. Sewn in our robes are horrid tales, and the speakers-in-tongues enounce atrocious tidings. The prophet-birds seem to speak sagely, but are shrieking their frustration. The senselessest babble, could we ken it, might disclose a dark message, or prayer."

Doorway Into Time (II)

2011-04-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of "Doorway Into Time" by American science fiction and fantasy writer C. L. Moore (part 2 because I've grown tired yesterday of putting all of the story from the physical book to this blog). For part I click here.

""That—that thing, Alanna. What was it? How did you—" She gripped her own bare arms harder, and another spasm of shuddering went over her. The blue-green sequins flashed chilly star-points from her gown as she moved. Her voice shook too; her very mind seemed to be shaking behind the blank eyes. But when she spoke the words made approximate sense. And they echoed his own thought. "I'm dreaming all this, you know." Her voice sounded far away. "This isn't really
happening. But—but something took me in its arms back there." She nodded toward the mirrored laboratory on the wall. "And everything whirled, and then-—" A hard shudder seized her. "I don't know...." "Did you see it?" She shook her head. "Maybe I did. I'm not sure. I was so dizzy—I think it went away through the door. Would you call it a door?" Her little breath of laughter was very near hysteria. "I—I felt its feet moving away." "But what was it? What did it look like?" "I don't know, Paul." He closed his lips on the questions that rushed to be asked.
Here in the dream, many things were very alien indeed. Those patterns on the wall, for instance. He thought he could understand how one could look at something and not be sure at all what the something was. And Alanna's heavy spasms of shuddering proved that shock must have blanked her mind protectively to much of what had happened.

She said:
"Aren't we going back now, Paul?" And her eyes flickered past him to the pictured laboratory. It was a child's question; her mind was refusing to accept anything but the barest essentials of their predicament. But he could not answer. His first impulse was to say, "Wait—we'll wake up in a minute." But suppose they did not? Suppose they were trapped here? And if the Thing came back.... Heavily, he said: "Of course it's a dream, Alarum. But while it lasts I think we'll have to act as if it were real. I don't want to—" The truth was, he thought, he was afraid to. "But we must. And going back wouldn't do any good as long as we go on dreaming. It would just come after us again."
It would come striding through the dream to drag them back, and after all people have
died in their sleep—died in their dreams, he thought. He touched the unwieldy weapon with his toe, thinking silently, "This will help us— maybe. If anything can, it will. And if it won't—well, neither will running away." And he glanced toward the high, distorted opening that must be a doorway into some other part of this unimaginable, dream-created building. It had gone that way, then. Perhaps they should follow. Perhaps their greatest hope of waking safely out of this nightmare lay in acting rashly, in following with the weapon before it expected them to follow. It might not guess his own presence here at all. It must have left Alanna alone in the dim room,
intending to return, not thinking to find her with a defender, or to find the defender armed...
But was he armed? He grinned wryly. Perhaps he ought to test the weapon. And yet, for all he knew, the Thing's strange, alien gaze might be upon him now. He was aware of a strong reluctance to let it know that he had any defense against it. Surprise—that was important. Keep it a secret until he needed a weapon, if he ever did need one. Very gently he pressed the trigger of the lens that had poured out lightnings in the faraway sanity of his laboratory. Would it work in
—a dream? For a long moment nothing happened. Then, faintly and delicately against his palm he felt the tubing begin to throb just a little. It was as much of an answer as he dared take now. Some power was there. Enough? He did not know. It was unthinkable, really, that he should ever need to know. Still— "Alanna," he said, "I think we'd better explore a little. No use just standing here waiting for it to come back. It may be perfectly friendly, you know. Dream creatures often are. But I'd like to see what's outside." "We'll wake up in a minute," she assured him between chattering teeth. "I'm all right, I think, really. Just—just nervous." He thought she' seemed to be rousing from her stupor. Perhaps the prospect of action—any action—even rashness like this, was better for them both than inactivity. He felt surer of himself as he lifted the heavy weapon. "But Paul, we can't!" She turned, half-way to the door, and faced him. "Didn't I tell you? I tried that before you came. There's a corridor outside, with knives all over the floor. Patterns of them, sharp-edged spirals and—and shapes. Look." She lifted her
sparkling skirt a little and put out one foot. He could see the clean, sharp lacerations of
the leather sole. His shoulders sagged a bit. Then: "Well, let's look anyhow. Come on." The corridor stretched before them, swimming in purple distances, great gothic hollows and arches melting upon arches. There were things upon the walls. Like the patterns in the room behind them, many were impossible to focus upon directly, too different from anything in human experience to convey meaning to the brain. The eye perceived them blankly, drawing no conclusions. He thought vaguely that the hall looked like a museum, with those great frames upon the walls.

Beside the door another tall frame leaned, empty. About six feet high, it was deep enough for a man to lie down in, and all around its edges an elaborate and beautiful decoration writhed, colored precisely like Alanna's blue-green gown. Interwoven in it were strands of silver, the color of her pale and shining hair. "It looks like a coffin," Alanna said aimlessly. Some very ugly thought stirred in Paul's mind. He would not recognize it; he pushed it back out of sight quickly, but he was gladder now that he had brought this lightning-throwing weapon along. The hall shimmered with strangeness before them. So many things he could not quite see clearly, but the razor-edged decorations of the floor were clear enough. It made the mind reel a little to think what utter alienage lay behind the choice of such adornment for a floor that must be walked upon—even in a dream. He thought briefly of the great earth-shaking feet in the darkness of his laboratory. Here in the dream they walked this knife-edged floor. They must. But how?
The spirals of the pattern lay in long loops and rosettes. After a moment, eyeing them, he said, "I think we can make it, Alanna. If we walk between the knives—see, there's space if we're careful." And if they were not careful, if they had to run. . . . "We've got to risk it," he said aloud, and with those words admitted to himself for perhaps the first time an urgency in this dream, risk and danger. . . . He took a firmer grip upon his burden and stepped delicately into the hollow of a steely spiral. Teetering a little, clutching at his arm to steady herself, Alanna came after him.Silence—vast, unechoing hollows quivering with silence all around them. They advanced very slowly, watching wide-eyed for any signs of life jin the distances, their
senses strained and aching with the almost subconscious awareness of any slightest motion in the floor that might herald great feet ponderously approaching. But That which had opened the doorway for them had gone now, for, a little while, and left them to their own devices. Paul carried the lens of his weapon ready in his free hand, the lightest possible pressure always on its trigger so that the tubing throbbed faintly against his palm. That reassurance that contact still flowed between his faraway laboratory and this unbelievable hall was all that kept him forging ahead over the razory mosaics. They went slowly, but they passed many very strange things. A tremendous transparent curtain swung from the vaulted ceiling in folds as immovable as iron. They slipped through the little triangle of opening where the draperies hung awry, and a
shower of fiery sparkles sprang out harmlessly when they brushed the sides. They passed a fountain that sent up gushes of soundless flame from its basin in the center of the corridor floor. They saw upon the walls, in frames and without them, things too alien to think about clearly. That very alienage was worrying the man. In dreams one rehearses the stimuli of the past, fears and hopes and memories. But how could one dream of things like these? Where in any human past could such memories lie? They skirted an oval stone set in the floor, the metal patterns swirling about it. They were both dizzy when they looked directly at it. Dangerous dizziness, since a fall here must end upon razor edges. And once they passed an indescribable something hanging against a black panel of the wall, that brought tears to the eyes with its sheer loveliness, a thing of unbearable beauty too far removed from human experience to leave any picture in their minds once they had gone past it. Only the emotional impact remained, remembered beauty too exquisite for the mind to grasp and hold. And the man knew definitely now that this at least was no part of any human memory, and could be in itself no dream.

They saw it all with the strange clarity and vividness of senses sharp with uncertainty and fear, but they saw it too with a dreamlike haziness that faded a little as they went on. To the man, a terrible wonder was dawning. Could it, after all, be a dream? Could it possibly be some alien reality into which they had stumbled? And the import of that frame outside the door they had left—the frame shaped like a coffin and adorned with the colors of Alanna's gown and hair. . . . Deep in his mind he knew what that frame was for. He knew he was walking through a museum filled with lovely things, and he was beginning to suspect why Alanna had been brought here too. The thing seemed unthinkable, even in a dream as mad as this, and yet— "Look, Paul." He glanced aside. Alanna had reached up to touch a steel-blue frame upon the wall, its edges enclosing nothing but a dim rosy shimmer. She was groping inside it, her face animated now. No thought had come to her yet about that other frame, evidently. No thought that from this dream neither of them might ever wake.
"Look," she said. "It seems empty, but I can feel something—something like feathers.What do you suppose—" "Don't try to suppose," he said almost brusquely. "There isn't any sense to any of this." "But some of the things are so pretty, Paul. See that— that snowstorm ahead, between the pillars?" He looked. Veiling the hallway a little distance away hung a shower of patterned
flakes, motionless in midair. Perhaps they were embroideries upon some gossamer drapery too sheer to see. But as he looked he thought he saw them quiver just a little. Quiver, and fall quiet, and then quiver again, as if—as if— "Paul!"
Everything stopped dead still for a moment. He did not need Alanna's whisper to make his heart pause as he strained intolerably to hear, to see, to feel. . . . Yes, definitely now the snowstorm curtain shook. And the floor shook with it in faint rhythms to that distant tremor—
This is it, he thought. This is real. He had known for minutes now that he was not walking through a dream. He stood in the midst of impossible reality, and the Enemy itself came nearer and nearer with each great soundless footfall, and there was nothing to do but wait. Nothing at all. It wanted Alanna. He knew why. It would not want himself, and it would brush him away like
smoke in its juggernaut striding to seize her, unless his weapon could stop it. His heart began to beat with heavy, thick blows that echoed the distant footsteps. "Alanna," he said, hearing the faintest possible quiver in his voice. "Alanna, get behind something—that pillar over' there. Don't make a sound. And if I tell you—run!" He stepped behind a nearer pillar, his arm aching from the weight of his burden, the lens of it throbbing faintly against his palm with its promise of power in leash. He thought it would work. There was no sound of footfalls as the rhythm grew stronger. Only by the strength of those tremors that shook the floor could he judge how near the Thing was drawing. The pillar itself was shaking now, and the snowstorm was convulsed each time a mighty foot struck the floor soundlessly. Paul thought of the knife-edged patterns which those feet were treading with such firm and measured strides. For a moment of panic he regretted his daring in coming to meet the Thing. He was sorry they had not stayed cowering in the room of the mirror—sorry they had not fled back down the whirling darkness through which they came. But you can't escape a nightmare. He held his lensed weapon throbbing like a throat against his palm, waiting to pour out lightning upon—what? Now it was very close. Now it was just beyond the snowstorm between the pillars. He could see dim motion through their veil. ... Snow swirled away from its mighty shoulders, clouded about its great head so that he
could not see very clearly what it was that stood there, tall and grotesque and terrible, its
eyes shining scarlet through the veil. He was aware only of the eyes, and of the being's majestic bulk, before his hand of its own volition closed hard upon the pulse of violence in his palm. For one timeless moment nothing happened. He was too stunned with the magnitude of the thing he faced to feel even terror at his weapon's failure; awe shut out every other thought. He was even a little startled when the glare of golden daylight burst hissing from his hand, splashing its brilliance across the space between them. Then relief was a weakness that loosened all his muscles as he played the deadliness of his weapon upon the Enemy, hearing the air shriek with its power, seeing the stone pillars blacken before those lashes of light. He was blinded by their glory; he could only stand there pouring the lightnings forth and squinting against their glare. The smell of scorched metal and stone was heavy in the air, and he could hear the crash of a falling column somewhere, burned through by the blast of the flame. Surely it too must be
consumed and falling.... Hope began to flicker in his brain. It was Alanna's whimper that told him something must still be wrong. Belatedly he reached up to close the glass visor of the mask he still wore, and by magic the glare ceased to blind him. He could see between the long, writhing whips of light—see the pillars falling and the steel patterns of the floor turn blue and melt away. But he could see it standing between those crumbling pillars now... He could see it standing in the full bath of the flames, see them splash upon its mighty chest and sluice away over its great shoulders like the spray of water, unheeded, impotent. Its eyes were darkening from crimson to an angry purple as it" lurched forward one ponderous, powerful stride, brushing away the sparks from its face, putting out a terrible inn. "Alanna—" said the man in a very quiet voice, pitched below the screaming of the flame. "Alanna—you'd better start back. I’ll hold it while I can. You'd better run, Alanna. . . ."

He did not know if she obeyed. He could spare no further attention from the desperate business at hand, to delay it —to hold it back even for sixty seconds—for thirty seconds — for one breath more of independent life. What might happen after that he could not let himself think. Perhaps not death— perhaps something far more alien and strange than death. ... He knew the straggle was hopeless and senseless, but he knew he must straggle on while breath remained in him. There was a narrow place in the corridor between himself and it. The lightning had weakened one wall already. He swung it away from the oncoming colossus and played the fire screaming to and fro upon blackened stones, seeing mortar crumble between them and girders bending in that terrible heat. The walls groaned, grinding their riven blocks surface against surface. Slowly, slowly they leaned together; slowly they fell. Stone dust billowed in a cloud to hide the final collapse of the corridor, but through it the scream of lightnings sounded and the shriek of metal against falling stone. And then, distantly, a deeper groaning of new pressure coming to bear. The man stood paralyzed for a moment, dizzy with an unreasonable hope that he had stopped the Enemy at last, not daring to look too closely for fear of failure. But hope and despair came almost simultaneously into his mind as he watched the mass of the closed walls shuddering and resisting for a moment—but only for a moment. With dust and stone blocks and steel girders falling away from its tremendous shoulders, it stepped through the ruined arch. Jagged golden lightnings played in its face, hissing and screaming futilely. It ignored them. Shaking off the debris of the wall, it strode forward, eyes purple with anger, great hands outstretched. And so the weapon failed. He loosed the trigger, hearing its shriek die upon the air as the long ribbons of lightning faded. It was instinct, echoing over millenniums from the first fighting ancestor of mankind, that made him swing the heavy machine overhead with both hands and hurl it into the face of the Enemy. And it was a little like relinquishing a living comrade to let the throb of that fiery tubing lose contact with his palm a last. Blindly he flung the-weapon from him, and in the same motion whirled and ran. The knife-edged floor spun past below him. If he could hit a rhythm to carry him from loop to empty loop of the pattern, he might even reach the room at the end of the passage— There was no sanctuary anywhere, but unreasoning instinct made him seek the place of his origin here.

Ahead of him a flutter of blue-green sequins now and then told him that Alanna was running too, miraculously keeping her balance on the patterned floor. He could not look up to watch her. His eyes were riveted to the spirals and loops among which his precarious footing lay. Behind him great feet were thudding soundlessly, shaking the floor. The things that happened then happened too quickly for the brain to resolve into any sequence at all. He knew that the silence which had flowed back when the screaming lightnings died was suddenly, shockingly broken again by a renewed screaming. He remembered seeing the metal patterns of the floor thrown into sharp new shadows by the light behind him, and he knew that the Enemy had found the trigger he had just released, that his weapon throbbed now against an alien hand. But it happened in the same instant that the doorway of the entrance room loomed up before him, and he hurled himself desperately into the dimness after Alanna, knowing his feet were cut through and bleeding, seeing the dark blotches of the tracks she too was leaving. The mirror loomed before them, an unbearable picture of the lost familiar room he could not hope to enter again in life. And all this was simultaneous with a terrifying soundless thunder of great feet at his very heels, of a mighty presence suddenly and ponderously in the same room with them, like a whirlwind exhausting the very air they gasped to breathe. He felt anger eddying about him without words or sound. He felt monstrous hands snatch him up as if a tornado had taken him into its windy grasp. He remembered purple eyes glaring through the dimness in one brief instant of perception before the hands hurled him away. He spun through empty air. Then a howling vortex seized him and he was falling in blindness, stunned and stupefied, through the same strange passageway that had brought him here. Distantly he heard Alanna scream. There as silence in the dim, round room in the center of the treasure house, except for a muffled howling from the screen. He who was master here stood quietly before it, his eyes half shut and ranging down the spectrum from purple to red, and then swiftly away from red through orange to a clear, pale, tranquil yellow. His chest still heaved a little with the excitement of that minor fiasco which he had brought upon himself, but it was an excitement soon over, and wholly disappointing. He was a little ashamed of his momentary anger. He should not have played the little creatures' puny lightnings upon them as they fell down the shaft of darkness. He had misjudged their capacity, after all. They were not really capable of giving him a fight worth while. It was interesting that one had followed the other, with its little weapon that sparkled and stung, interesting that one fragile being had stood up to him. But he knew a moment's regret for the beauty of the blue-and-white creature he had flung away. The long, smooth lines of it, the subtle coloring. . . . Too bad that it had been worthless because it was helpless too. Helpless against himself, he thought, and equally against the drive of its own mysterious motives. He sighed. He thought again, almost regretfully, of the lovely thing he had coveted hurtling away down the vortex with lightnings bathing it through the blackness. Had he destroyed it? He did not know. He was a little sorry now that anger for his ruined treasures had made him lose his temper when they ran.
Futile, scuttling little beings —they had cheated him out of beauty because of their own impotence against him, but he was not even angry about that now. Only sorry, with vague, confused sorrows he did not bother to clarify in his mind. Regret for the loss of a lovely thing, regret that he had expected danger from them and been disappointed, regret perhaps for
his own boredom, that did not bother any longer to probe into the motives of living things. He was growing old indeed. The vortex still roared through the darkened screen. He stepped back from it, letting opacity close over the surface of the portal, hushing all sound. His eyes were a tranquil yellow. Tomorrow he would hunt again, and perhaps tomorrow. He went out slowly, walking with long, soundless strides that made the steel mosaics sing faintly beneath his feet"