http://www.onlineclasses.org/2011/01/20/the-50best-short-stories-of-all-time/
Jorge Luis Borges: The South
The man who landed in Buenos Aires in 1871 bore
the name of Johannes Dahlmann and he was a
minister in the Evangelical Church. In 1939, one of
his grandchlidren, Juan Dahlmann, was secretary of a
municipal library on Calle Cordoba, and he
considered himself profoundly Argentinian. His
maternal grandfather had been that Francisco Flores,
of the Second Line-Infantry Division, who had died
on the frontier of Buenos Aires, run through with a
lance by Indians from Catriel; in the discord inherent
betweeh his two lines of descent, Juan Dahlmann
(perhaps driven to it by his Germanic blood) chose
the line represented by his romantic ancestor, his
ancestor of the romantic death. An old sword, a
leather frame containing the daguerreotype of a
blank-faced man with a beard, the dash and grace of
certin music, the familiar strophes of Martin Fierro,
the passing years, boredom and solitude, all went to
foster this voluntary, but never ostentatioous
nationalism. At the cost of numerous small
privations, Dahlmann had managed to save the empty
shell of a ranch in the South which had belonged to
the Flores family; he continually recalled the image
of the balsamic eucalyptus trees and the great rosecolored house which had once been crimson. His
duties, perhaps even indolence, kept him in the city.
Summer after summer he contented himself with the
abstract idea of possession and with the certitude that
his ranch was waiting for him on a precise site in the
middle of the plain. Late in February, 1939,
something happened to him.
looked fine. Dahlmann listened to them with a kind
of feeble stupor and he marveled at their not knowing
that he was in hell. A week, eight days passed, and
they were like eight centuries. One afternoon, the
usual doctor appeared, accompanied by a new doctor,
and they carried him off to a sanitarium on the Calle
Ecuador, for it was necessary to X-ray him.
Dahlmann, in the hackney coach which bore them
away, thought that he would, at last, be able to sleep
in a room different from his own. He felt happy and
communicative. When he arrived at his destination,
they undressed him, shaved his head, bound him with
metal fastenings to a stretcher; they shone bright
lights on him until he was blind and dizzy,
auscultated him, and a masked man stuck a needle
into his arm. He awoke with a feeling of nausea,
covered with a bandage, in a cell with something of a
well about it; in the days and nights which followed
the operation he came to realize that he had merely
been, up until then, in a suburb of hell. Ice in his
mouth did not leave the least trace of freshness.
During these days Dahlmann hated himself in minute
detail: he hated his identity, his bodily necessities, his
humiliation, the beard which bristled up on his face.
He stoically endured the curative measures, which
were painful, but when the surgeon told him he had
been on the point of death from septicemia,
Dahlmann dissolved in tears of self-pity for his fate.
Physical wretchedness and the incessant anticipation
of horrible nights had not allowed him time to think
of anything so abstact as death. On another day, the
surgeon told him he was healing and that, very soon,
he would be able to go to his ranch for
convalescence. Incredibly enough, the promised day
arrived.
Blind to all fault, destiny can be ruthless at one's
slightest distraction. Dahlmann had succeeded in
acquiring, on that very afternoon, an imperfect copy
of Weil's edition of The Thousand and One Nights.
Avid to examine this find, he did not wait for the
elevator but hurried up the stairs. In the obscurity,
something brushed by his forehead: a bat, a bird? On
the face of the woman who opened the door to him he
saw horror engraved, and the hand he wiped across
his face came away red with blood. The edge of a
recently painted door which someone had forgotten
to close had caused this wound. Dahlmann was able
to fall asleep, but from the moment he awoke at dawn
the savor of all things was atrociously poignant.
Fever wasted him and the pictures in The Thousand
and One Nights served to illustrate nightmares.
Reality favors symmetries and slight anachronisms:
Dahlmann had arrived at the sanitarium in a hackney
coach and now a hackney coach was to take him to
the Constitucion station. The first fresh tang of
autumn, after the summer's oppressiveness, seemed
like a symbol in nature of his rescue and release from
fever and death. The city, at seven in the morning,
had not lost that air of an old house lent it by the
night; the streets seemed like long vestibules, the
plazas were like patios. Dahlmann recognized the
city with joy on the edge of vertigo: a second before
his eyes registered the phenomena themselves, he
recalled the corners, the billboards, the modest
variety of Buenos Aires. In the yellow light of the
new day, all things returned to him.
Friends and relatives paid him visits and, with
exaggerated smiles, assured him that they thought he
Every Argentine knows that the South begins at the
other side of Rivadavia. Dahlmann was in the habit
1
of saying that this was no mere convention, that
whoever crosses this street enters a more ancient and
sterner world. From inside the carriage he sought out,
among the new buildings, the iron grill window, the
brass knocker, the arched door, the entrance way, the
intimate patio.
At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty
minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the
Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's
house) there was an enormous cat which allowed
itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainful divinity.
He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He
ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar,
sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the
clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black
coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two
beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a
glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the
magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of
the instant.
Along the next to the last platform the train lay
waiting. Dahlmann walked through the coaches until
he found one almost empty. He arranged his baggage
in the network rack. When the train started off, he
took down his valise and extracted, after some
hesitation, the first volume of The Thousand and One
Nights. To travel with this book, which was so much
a part of the history of his ill-fortune, was a kind of
affirmation that his ill-fortune had been annulled; it
was a joyous and secret defiance of the frustrated
forces of evil.
Along both sides of the train the city dissipated into
suburbs; this sight, and then a view of the gardens
and villas, delayed the beginning of his reading. The
truth was that Dahlmann read very little. The
magnetized mountain and the genie who swore to kill
his benefactor are - who would deny it? - marvelous,
but not so much more than the morning itself and the
mere fact of being. The joy of life distracted him
from paying attention to Scheherezade and her
superfluous miracles. Dahlmann closed his book and
allowed himself to live.
Lunch - the bouillon served in shining metal bowls,
as in the remote summers of childhood - was one
more peaceful and rewarding delight.
Tomorrow I'll wake up at the ranch, he thought, and
it was as if he was two men at a time: the man who
traveled through the autumn day and across the
geography of the fatherland, and the other one,
locked up in a sanitarium and subject to methodical
servitude. He saw unplastered brick houses, long and
angled, timelessly watching the trains go by; he saw
horsemen along the dirt roads; he saw gullies and
lagoons and ranches; he saw great luminous clouds
that resembled marble; and all these things were
accidental, casual, like dreams of the plain. He also
thought he recognized trees and crop fields; but he
would not have been able to name them, for his
actual knowledge of the country side was quite
inferior to his nostalgic and literary knowledge.
From time to time he slept, and his dreams were
animated by the impetus of the train. The intolerable
white sun of high noon had already become the
yellow sun which precedes nightfall, and it would not
be long before it would turn red. The railroad car was
now also different; it was not the same as the one
which had quit the station siding at Constitucion; the
plain and the hours had transfigured it. Outside, the
moving shadow of the railroad car stretched toward
the horizon. The elemental earth was not perturbed
either by settlements or other signs of humanity. The
country was vast but at the same time intimate and, in
some measure, secret. The limitless country
sometimes contained only a solitary bull. The
solitude was perfect, perhaps hostile, and it might
have occurred to Dahlmann that he was traveiling
into the past and not merely south. He was distracted
form these considerations by the railroad inspector
who, on reading his ticket, advised him that the train
would not let him off at the regular station but at
another: an earlier stop, one scarcely known to
Dahlmann. (The man added an explanation which
Dahlmann did not attempt to understand, and which
he hardly heard, for the mechanism of events did not
concern him.)
The train laboriously ground to a halt, practically in
the middle of the plain. The station lay on the other
side of the tracks; it was not much more than a siding
and a shed. There was no means of conveyance to be
seen, but the station chief supposed that the traveler
might secure a vehicle from a general store and inn to
be found some ten or twelve blocks away.
Dahlmann accepted the walk as a small adventure.
The sun had already disappeared from view, but a
final splendor, exalted the vivid and silent plain,
before the night erased its color. Less to avoid fatigue
than to draw out his enjoyment of these sights,
Dahmann walked slowly, breathing in the odor of
clover with sumptuous joy.
The general store at one time had been painted a deep
scarlet, but the years had tempered this violent color
for its own good. Something in its poor architecture
recalled a steel engraving, perhaps one from an old
2
edition of Paul et Virginie. A number of horses were
hitched up to the paling. Once inside, Dahlmann
thought he recognized the shopkeeper. Then he
realized that he had been deceived by the man's
resemblance to one of the male nurses in the
sanitarium. When the shopkeeper heard Dahlmann's
request, he said he would have the shay made up. In
order to add one more event to that day and to kill
time, Dahlmann decided to eat at the general store.
Some country louts, to whom Dahlmann did not at
first pay any attention, were eating and drinking at
one of the tables. On the floor, and hanging on to the
bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His
years had reduced and polished him as water does a
stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He
was dark, dried up , diminutive, and seemed outside
time, situated in eternity. Dahlmann noted with
satisfaction the kerchief, the thick poncho, the long
chiripa, and the colt boots, and told himself, as he
recalled futile discussions with people from the
Northern counties or from the province of Entre Rios,
that gauchos like this no longer existed outside the
South.
Dahlmann sat down next to the window. The
darkness began overcoming the plain, but the odor
and sound of the earth penetrated the iron bars of the
window. The shop owner brought him sardines,
followed by some roast meat. Dahlmann washed the
meal down with several glasses of red wine. Idling,
he relished the tart savor of the wine, and let his gaze,
now grown somewhat drowsy, wander over the shop.
A kerosene lamp hung from a beam. There were
three customers at the other table: two of them
appeared to be farm workers; the third man, whose
features hinted at Chinese blood, was drinking with
his hat on. Of a sudden, Dahlmann felt something
brush lightly against his face. Next to the heavy glass
of turbid wine, upon one of the stripes in the table
cloth, lay a spit ball of breadcrumb. That was all: but
someone had throuwn it there.
The men at the other table seemed totally cut off
from him. Perplexed, Dahlmann decided that nothing
had happened, and he opened the volume of The
Thousand and One Nights, by way of suppressing
reality. After a few moments another little ball landed
on his table, and now the peones laughed outright.
Dahlmann said to himself that he was not frightened,
but he reasoned that it would be a major blunder if
he, a convalescent, were to allow himself to be
dragged by strangers into some chaotic quarrel. He
determined to leave, and had already gotten to his
feet when the owner came up and exhorted him in an
alarmed voice:
"Senor Dahlmann, don't pay any attention to those
lads; they're half high."
Dahlmann was not surprised to learn that the other
man, now, knew his name. But he felt that these
conciliatory words served only to aggravate the
situation. Previous to the moment, the peones'
provocation was directed againt an unknown face,
against no one in particular, almost againt no one at
all. Now it was an attack against him, against his
name, and his neighbors knew it. Dahlmann pushed
the owner aside, confronted the peones, and
demanded to know what they wanted of him.
The tough with a Chinese look staggered heavily to
his feet. Almost in Juan Dahlmann's face he shouted
insults, as if he had been a long way off. He game
was to exaggerate constituted ferocious mockery.
Between curses and obscenities, he threw a long
knife into the air, followed it with his eyes, caught
and juggled it, and challenged Dahlmann to a knife
fight. The owner objected in a tremulous voice,
pointing out that Dahlmann was unarmed. At this
point, something unforeseeable occurred.
From a corner of the room, the old ecstatic gaucho in whom Dahlmann saw a summary and cipher of the
South (his South) - threw him a naked dagger, which
landed at his feet. It was as if the South had resolved
that Dahlmann should accept the duel. Dahlmann
bent over to pick up the dagger, and felt two things.
The first, that this almost instinctive act bound him to
fight. The second, that the weapon, in his torpid hand,
was no defense at all, but would merely serve to
justify his murder. He had once played with a
poniard, like all men, but his idea of fencing and
knife-play did not go further than the notion that all
strokes should be directed upwards, with the cutting
edge held inwards. They would not have allowed
such things ot happen to me in the sanitarium, he
thought.
"Let's get on our way," said that other man.
They went out and if Dahlmann was without hope, he
was also without fear. As he crossed the threshold, he
felt that to die in a knife fight, under the open sky,
and going forward to the attack, would have been a
liberation, a joy, and a festive occasion, on the first
night in the sanitarium, when they stuck him with the
needle. He felt that if he had been able to choose,
then, or to dream his death, this would have been the
death he would have chosen or dreamt.
Firmly clutching his knife, which he perhaps would
not know how to wield, Dahlmann went out into the
plain.
3
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
THE NOSE
I
On 25 March an unusually strange event occurred
in St. Petersburg. For that morning Barber Ivan
Yakovlevitch, a dweller on the Voznesensky
Prospekt (his family name is lost now — it no longer
figures on a signboard bearing a portrait of a
gentleman with a soaped cheek, and the words:
“Also, Blood Let Here”) — for that morning Barber
Ivan Yakovlevitch awoke early, and caught the smell
of newly baked bread. Raising himself a little, he
perceived his wife (a most respectable lady, and one
especially fond of coffee) to be just in the act of
drawing newly baked rolls from the oven.
“Prascovia Osipovna,” he said, “I would rather not
have any coffee for breakfast, but, instead, a hot roll
and an onion,” — the truth being that he wanted both
but knew it to be useless to ask for two things at
once, as Prascovia Osipovna did not fancy such
tricks.
“Oh, the fool shall have his bread,” the wife
thought, “So much the better for me then, as I shall
have that much more coffee.”
And she threw one roll on to the table.
Ivan Yakovlevitch donned a jacket over his shirt for
politeness' sake, and, seating himself at the table,
poured out salt, got a couple of onions ready, took a
knife into his hand, assumed an air of importance,
and cut the roll open. Then he glanced into the roll's
middle. To his intense surprise he saw something
glimmering there. He probed it cautiously with the
knife — then poked at it with a finger.
“Quite solid it is!” he said to himself. “What in the
world is it likely to be?”
He stuck in his fingers, and pulled out — a nose! ..
His hands dropped to his sides for a moment. Then he
rubbed his eyes hard. Then again he probed the thing.
A nose! Sure enough a nose! Yes, and one familiar to
him, somehow! Oh, horror spread upon his feature!
Yet that horror was a trifle compared with his
spouse's overmastering wrath.
“You brute!” she shouted frantically. “Where have
you cut off that nose? You villain, you! You
drunkard! Why, I'll go and report you to the police
myself. You brigand, you! I have already heard from
three men that, while shaving them, your pulled their
noses to the point that they could hardly stand it.”
But Ivan Yakovlevitch was neither alive nor dead.
He realized that the nose was none other than that
Collegiate Assessor Kovalev, whom he was shaved
every Wednesday and Sunday.
— “Stop, Prascovia Osipovna! I'll wrap it in a rag,
in some corner: leave it there for awhile, and
afterwards I'll take it away.”
“And I won't hear of it! As if I'm going to have a
cutoff nose lying around the room! Oh, you old stick!
Maybe you can just strop a razor still; but soon you'll
be no good at all for the rest of your work. You
loafer, you wastrel, you bungler, you blockhead!
Aye, I'll tell the police of you. Take it away, then.
Take it away. Take it anywhere you like. Oh, that I'd
never caught the smell of it!”
Ivan Yakovlevitch was dumbfounded. He thought
and thought, but did not know what to think.
“The devil knows how it's happened,” he said,
scratching one ear. “You see, I don't know for certain
whether I came home drunk last night or not. But
certainly things look as though something out of the
way happened then, for bread comes of baking, and a
nose of something else altogether. Oh, I just can't
make it out.”
So he sat silent. At the thought that the police might
find the nose at his place, and arrest him, he felt
frantic. Yes, already he could see the red collar with
the smart silver braiding — the sword! He shuddered
from head to foot.
But at last he got out, and donned waistcoat and
shoes, wrapped the nose in a rag, and departed amid
Prascovia Osipovna's forcible objurgations.
His one idea was to rid himself of the nose, and
return quietly home — to do so either by throwing
the nose into the gutter in front of the gates or by just
letting it drop anywhere. Yet, unfortunately, he kept
meeting friends, and they kept saying to him: “Where
are you off to?” or “Whom have you arranged to
shave at this early hour?” until finding a suitable
moment became impossible. Once, true, he did
succeed in dropping the thing, but no sooner had he
done so than a constable pointed at him with his
truncheon, and shouted: “Pick it up again! You've
lost something,” and he perforce had to take the nose
into his possession once more, and stuff it into a
pocket. Meanwhile his desperation grew in
proportion as more and more booths and shops
opened for business, and more and more people
appeared in the street.
At last he decided that he would go to the
Isaakievsky Bridge, and throw the thing, if he could,
into the Neva. But here let me confess my fault in not
having said more about Ivan Yakovlevitch himself, a
man estimable in more respects than one.
Like every decent Russian tradesman, Ivan
Yakovlevitch was a terrible tippler. Daily he shaved
the chins of others, but always his own was unshorn,
and his jacket (he never wore a topcoat) piebald —
black, thickly studded with grayish, brownishyellowish stains — and shiny at the collar, and
adorned with three drooping tufts of thread instead of
buttons. But, with that, Ivan Yakovlevitch was a great
cynic. Whenever Collegiate Assessor Kovalev was
4
being shaved, and said to him, according to custom:
“Ivan Yakovlevitch, your hands do smell!” he would
retort: “But why should they smell?” and, when the
Collegiate Assessor had replied: “Really I do not
know, brother, but in any case they do,” take a pinch
of snuff, and soap the Collegiate Assessor upon
cheek, and under nose, and behind ears, and around
chin at his good will and pleasure.
So the worthy citizen stood on the Isaakievsky
Bridge, and looked about him. Then, leaning over the
parapet, he feigned to be trying to see if any fish were
passing underneath. Then gently he cast forth the
nose.
At once ten puds-weight seemed to have been lifted
from his shoulders. Actually he smiled! But, instead
of departing, next, to shave the chins of chinovniki,
he bethought him of making for a certain
establishment inscribed “Meals and Tea,” that he
might get there a glassful of punch.
Suddenly he sighted a constable standing at the end
of the bridge, a constable of smart appearance, with
long whiskers, a three-cornered hat, and complete
with a sword. Oh, Ivan Yakovlevitch could have
fainted! Then the constable, beckoning with a finger,
cried:
“Nay, my good man. Come here.”
Ivan Yaklovlevitch, knowing the proprieties, pulled
off his cap at quite a distance away, advanced
quickly, and said:
“I wish your Excellency the best of health.”
“No, no! None of that `your Excellency,' brother.
Come and tell me what you have been doing on the
bridge.”
“Before God, sir, I was crossing it on my way to
some customers when I peeped to see if there were
any fish jumping.”
“You lie, brother! You lie! You won't get out of it
like that. Be so good as to answer me truthfully.”
“Oh, twice a week in future I'll shave you for
nothing. Aye, or even three times a week.”
“No, no, friend. That is rubbish. Already I've got
three barbers for the purpose, and all of them account
it an honor. Now, tell me, I ask again, what you have
just been doing?”
This made Ivan Yakovlevitch blanch, and — —
Further events here become enshrouded in mist.
What happened after that is unknown to all men.
II
Collegiate Assessor KOVALEV also awoke early
that morning. And when he had done so he made the
“B-r-rh!” with his lips which he always did when he
had been asleep — he himself could not have said
why. Then he stretched, reached for a small mirror on
the table near by, and set himself to inspect a pimple
which had broken out on his nose the night before.
But, to his unbounded astonishment, there was only a
flat patch on his face where the nose should have
been! Greatly alarmed, he got some water, washed,
and rubbed his eyes hard with the towel. Yes, the
nose indeed was gone! He prodded the spot with a
hand — pinched himself to make sure that he was not
still asleep. But no; he was not still sleeping. Then he
leapt from the bed, and shook himself. No nose!
Finally, he got his clothes on, and hurried to the
office of the Police Commissioner.
Here let me add something which may enable the
reader to perceive just what the Collegiate Assessor
was like. Of course, it goes without saying that
Collegiate Assessors who acquire the title with the
help of academic diplomas cannot be compared with
Collegiate Assessors who become Collegiate
Assessors through service in the Caucasus, for the
two species are wholly distinct, they are — — Stay,
though. Russia is so strange a country that, let one
but say anything about any one Collegiate Assessor,
and the rest, from Riga to Kamchatka, at once apply
the remark to themselves — for all titles and all ranks
it means the same thing. Now, Kovalev was a
“Caucasian” Collegiate Assessor, and had, as yet,
borne the title for two years only. Hence, unable ever
to forget it, he sought the more to give himself
dignity and weight by calling himself, in addition to
“Collegiate Assessor,” “Major.”
“Look here, good woman,” once he said to a shirts'
vendor whom he met in the street, “come and see me
at my home. My apartment is on Sadovaia Street. Just
ask, ‘Is this where Major Kovalev lives?' Anyone will
show you.” Or, on meeting fashionable ladies, he
would say: “My dear madam, ask for Major
Kovalev's apartment.” So we too will call the
Collegiate Assessor “Major.”
Major Kovalev was in the habit of taking a daily
walk on Nevsky Prospekt in an extremely clean and
well-starched shirt and collar, and in whiskers of the
sort still to be seen on provincial surveyors,
architects, regimental doctors, other officials, and all
men who have round, red cheeks, and play a good
hand of “Boston.” Such whiskers run across the exact
center of the cheek — then head straight for the nose.
Again, Major Kovalev always had on him a quantity
of seals, both of seals engraved with coats of arms,
and of seals inscribed “Wednesday,” “Thursday,”
“Monday,” and the rest. And, finally, Major Kovalev
had come to live in St. Petersburg because of
necessity. That is to say, he had come to live in St.
Petersburg because he wished to obtain a post
befitting his new title — whether a ViceGovernorship or, failing that, an Administratorship in
a leading department. Nor was Major Kovalev
altogether set against marriage. Merely he required
that his bride should possess not less than two
5
hundred thousand rubles in capital. The reader,
therefore, can now imagine what was the Major's
disposition when he saw that instead of a not
unpresentable nose there was on his face an
extremely uncouth, smooth, and uniform patch.
Ill luck had it, that morning, that not a cab was
visible throughout the street's whole length; so,
huddling himself up in his cloak, and covering his
face with a handkerchief (to make it look as though
his nose were bleeding), he had to start upon his way
on foot.
“Perhaps this is only imagination?” he reflected.
Presently he turned aside towards a restaurant (for he
wished yet again to get a sight of himself in a mirror).
“The nose can't have removed itself of sheer idiocy.”
Luckily no customers were present in the restaurant
— merely some waiters were sweeping out the
rooms, and rearranging the chairs, and others, sleepyeyed fellows, were setting forth trayfuls of hot
pastries. On chairs and tables last night's newspapers,
coffee-stained, were strewn.
“Thank God that no one is here!” the Major
reflected. “Now I can look at myself again.”
He approached a mirror in some trepidation, and
peeped therein. Then he spat.
“The devil only knows what this vileness means!”
he muttered. “If even there had been something to
take the nose's place! But, as it is, there's nothing
there at all.”
He bit his lips with vexation, and hurried out of the
restaurant. No; as he went along he must look at no
one, and smile at no one. Then he halted as though
riveted to earth. For in front of the doors of a
mansion he saw occur a phenomenon of which,
simply, no explanation was possible. Before that
mansion there stopped a carriage. And then a door of
the carriage opened, and there leapt thence, huddling
himself up, a uniformed gentleman, and that
uniformed gentleman ran headlong up the mansion's
entrance-steps, and disappeared within. And oh,
Kovalev's horror and astonishment to perceive that
the gentleman was none other than — his own nose!
The unlooked-for spectacle made everything swim
before his eyes. Scarcely, for a moment, could he
even stand. Then, deciding that at all costs he must
await the gentleman's return to the carriage, he
remained where he was, shaking as though with
fever. Sure enough, the Nose did return, two minutes
later. It was clad in a gold-braided, high-collared
uniform, buckskin breeches, and cockaded hat. And
slung beside it there was a sword, and from the
cockade on the hat it could be inferred that the Nose
was purporting to pass for a State Councilor. It
seemed now to be going to pay another visit
somewhere. At all events it glanced about it, and
then, shouting to the coachman, “Drive up here,”
reentered the vehicle, and set forth.
Poor Kovalev felt almost demented. The
astounding event left him utterly at a loss. For how
could the nose which had been on his face but
yesterday, and able then neither to drive nor to walk
independently, now be going about in uniform? —
He started in pursuit of the carriage, which, luckily,
did not go far, and soon halted before the Gostiny
Dvor. [12]
Kovalev too hastened to the building, pushed
through the line of old beggar-women with bandaged
faces and apertures for eyes whom he had so often
scorned, and entered. Only a few customers were
present, but Kovalev felt so upset that for a while he
could decide upon no course of action save to scan
every corner in the gentleman's pursuit. At last he
sighted him again, standing before a counter, and,
with face hidden altogether behind the uniform's
standup collar, inspecting with absorbed attention
some wares.
“How, even so, am I to approach it?” Kovalev
reflected. “Everything about it, uniform, hat, and all,
seems to show that it is a State Councilor. now. Only
the devil knows what is to be done!”
He started to cough in the Nose's vicinity, but the
Nose did not change its position for a single moment.
“My good sir,” at length Kovalev said, compelling
himself to boldness, “my good sir, I — — ”
“What do you want?” And the Nose did then turn
round.
“My good sir, I am in a difficulty. Yet somehow, I
think, I think, that — well, I think that you ought to
know your proper place better. All at once, you see, I
find you — where? Do you not feel as I do about it?”
“Pardon me, but I cannot apprehend your meaning.
Pray explain further.”
“Yes, but how, I should like to know?” Kovalev
thought to himself. Then, again taking courage, he
went: on:
“I am, you see — well, in point of fact, you see, I
am a Major. Hence you will realize how unbecoming
it is for me to have to walk about without a nose. Of
course, a peddler of oranges on the Vozkresensky
Bridge could sit there noseless well enough, but I
myself am hoping soon to receive a — — Hm, yes.
Also, I have amongst my acquaintances several ladies
of good houses (Madame Chektareva, wife of the
State Councilor, for example), and you may judge for
yourself what that alone signifies. Good sir” —
Major Kovalev gave his shoulders a shrug — “I do
not know whether you yourself (pardon me) consider
conduct of this sort to be altogether in accordance
with the rules of duty and honor, but at least you can
understand that — — ”
6
“I understand nothing at all,” the Nose broke in.
“Explain yourself more satisfactorily.”
“Good sir,” Kovalev went on with a heightened
sense of dignity, “the one who is at a loss to
understand the other is I. But at least the immediate
point should be plain, unless you are determined to
have it otherwise. Merely — you are my own nose.”
The Nose regarded the Major, and contracted its
brows a little.
“My dear sir, you speak in error,” was its reply. “I
am just myself — myself separately. And in any case
there cannot ever have existed a close relation
between us, for, judging from the buttons of your
undress uniform, your service is being performed in
another department than my own.”
And the Nose definitely turned away.
Kovalev stood dumbfounded. What to do, even
what to think, he had not a notion.
Presently the agreeable swish of ladies' dresses
began to be heard. Yes, an elderly, lace-bedecked
dame was approaching, and, with her, a slender
maiden in a white frock which outlined delightfully a
trim figure, and, above it, a straw hat of a lightness as
of pastry. Behind them there came, stopping every
now and then to open a snuffbox, a tall, whiskered
beau in quite a twelve-fold collar.
Kovalev moved a little nearer, pulled up the collar
of his shirt, straightened the seals on his gold watchchain, smiled, and directed special attention towards
the slender lady as, swaying like a floweret in spring,
she kept raising to her brows a little white hand with
fingers almost of transparency. And Kovalev's smiles
became broader still when peeping from under the
hat he saw there to be an alabaster, rounded little
chin, and part of a cheek flushed like an early rose.
But all at once he recoiled as though scorched, for all
at once he had remembered that he had not a nose on
him, but nothing at all. So, with tears forcing
themselves upwards, he wheeled about to tell the
uniformed gentleman that he, the uniformed
gentleman, was no State Councilor, but an impostor
and a knave and a villain and the Major's own nose.
But the Nose, behold, was gone! That very moment
had it driven away to, presumably, pay another visit.
This drove Kovalev to the last pitch of desperation.
He went back to the mansion, and stationed himself
under its portico, in the hope that, by peering hither
and thither, hither and thither, he might once more
see the Nose appear. But, well though he
remembered the Nose's cockaded hat and goldbraided uniform, he had failed at the time to note also
its cloak, the color of its horses, the make of its
carriage, the look of the lackey seated behind, and the
pattern of the lackey's livery. Besides, so many
carriages were moving swiftly up and down the street
that it would have been impossible to note them all,
and equally so to have stopped any one of them.
Meanwhile, as the day was fine and sunny, the
Prospekt was thronged with pedestrians also — a
whole kaleidoscopic stream of ladies was flowing
along the pavements, from Police Headquarters to the
Anitchkin Bridge. There one could descry an Aulic
Councilor. whom Kovalev knew well. A gentleman
he was whom Kovalev always addressed as
“Lieutenant-Colonel,” and especially in the presence
of others. And there went Yaryzhkin, Chief Clerk to
the Senate, a crony who always rendered forfeit at
“Boston” on playing an eight. And, lastly, a “Major”
like Kovalev, a similar “Major” with an Assessorship
acquired through Caucasian service, started to beckon
to Kovalev with a finger!
“The devil take him!” was Kovalev's muttered
comment. “Hi, cabman! Drive to the Police
Commissioner's direct.”
But just when he was entering the drozhki he
added:
“No. Go by Ivanovskaia Street.”
“Is the Commissioner in?” he asked on crossing the
threshold.
“He is not,” was the doorkeeper's reply. “He's gone
this very moment.”
“There's luck for you!”
“Aye,” the doorkeeper went on. “Only just a
moment ago he was off. If you'd been a bare halfminute sooner you'd have found him at home,
maybe.”
Still holding the handkerchief to his face, Kovalev
returned to the cab, and cried wildly:
“Drive on!”
“Where to, though?” the cabman inquired.
“Oh, straight ahead!”
“`Straight ahead'? But the street divides here. To
right, or to left?”
The question caused Kovalov to pause and recollect
himself. In his situation he ought to make his next
step an application to the Board of Discipline — not
because the Board was directly connected with the
police, but because its dispositions would be
executed more speedily than in other departments. To
seek satisfaction of the very department in which the
Nose had declared itself to be serving would be quite
unwise, since from the Nose's very replies it was
clear that it was the sort of individual who held
nothing sacred, and, in that case, might lie as
unconscionably as it had lied in asserting itself never
to have figured in its proprietor's company. Kovalev,
therefore, decided to seek the Board of Discipline.
But just as he was on the point of being driven thither
there occurred to him the thought that the impostor
and knave who had behaved so shamelessly during
the late encounter might even now be using the time
to get out of the city, and that in that case all further
7
pursuit of the rogue would become vain, or at all
events last for, God preserve us! a full month. So at
last, left only to the guidance of Providence, the
Major resolved to go to a newspaper office, and
publish a circumstantial description of the Nose in
such good time that anyone meeting with the truant
might at once be able either to restore it to him or to
give information as to its whereabouts. So he not
only directed the cabman to the newspaper office,
but, all the way thither, prodded him in the back, and
shouted: “Hurry up, you rascal! Hurry up, you
rogue!” whilst the cabman intermittently responded:
“Aye, barin,” and nodded, and plucked at the reins of
a steed as shaggy as a spaniel.
The moment that the drozhki halted Kovalev
dashed, breathless, into a small reception-office.
There, seated at a table, a gray-headed clerk in
ancient jacket and pair of spectacles was, with pen
tucked between lips, counting sums received in
copper.
“Who here takes the advertisements?” Kovalev
exclaimed as he entered. “A-ah! Good day to you.”
“And my respects,” the gray-headed clerk replied,
raising his eyes for an instant, and then lowering
them again to the spread out copper heaps.
“I want you to publish — — ”
“Pardon — one moment.” And the clerk with one
hand committed to paper a figure, and with a finger
of the other hand shifted two accounts markers.
Standing beside him with an advertisement in his
hands, a footman in a laced coat, and sufficiently
smart to seem to be in service in an aristocratic
mansion, now thought well to display some
knowledge
“Sir,” he said to the clerk, “I do assure you that the
puppy is not worth eight grivni even. In any case I
wouldn't give that much for it. Yet the countess loves
it — yes, just loves it, by God! Anyone wanting it of
her will have to pay a hundred rubles. Well, to tell the
truth between you and me, people's tastes differ. Of
course, if one's a sportsman one keeps a setter or a
spaniel. And in that case don't you spare five hundred
rubles, or even give a thousand, if the dog is a good
one.”
The worthy clerk listened with gravity, yet none the
less accomplished a calculation of the number of
letters in the advertisement brought. On either side
there was a group of charwomen, shop assistants,
doorkeepers, and the like. All had similar
advertisements in their hands, with one of the
documents to notify that a coachman of good
character was about to be disengaged, and another
one to advertise a koliaska imported from Paris in
1814, and only slightly used since, and another one a
maidservant of nineteen experienced in laundry work,
but prepared also for other jobs, and another one a
sound drozhki save that a spring was lacking, and
another one a gray-dappled, spirited horse of the age
of seventeen, and another one some turnip and radish
seed just received from London, and another one a
country house with every amenity, stabling for two
horses, and sufficient space for the laying out of a
fine birch or spruce plantation, and another one some
secondhand footwear, with, added, an invitation to
attend the daily auction sale from eight o'clock to
three. The room where the company thus stood
gathered together was small, and its atmosphere
confined; but this closeness, of course, Collegiate
Assessor Kovalev never perceived, for, in addition to
his face being muffled in a handkerchief, his nose
was gone, and God only knew its present habitat!
“My dear sir,” at last he said impatiently, “allow
me to ask you something: it is a pressing matter.”
“One moment, one moment! Two rubles, fortythree kopeks. Yes, presently. Sixty rubles, four
kopeks.”
With which the clerk threw the two advertisements
concerned towards the group of charwomen and the
rest, and turned to Kovalev.
“Well?” he said. “What do you want?”
“Your pardon,” replied Kovalev, “but fraud and
knavery has been done. I still cannot understand the
affair, but wish to announce that anyone returning me
the rascal shall receive an adequate reward.”
“Your name, if you would be so good?”
“No, no. What can my name matter? I cannot tell it
you. I know many acquaintances such as Madame
Chektareva (wife of the State Councilor.) and
Pelagea Grigorievna Podtochina (wife of the StaffOfficer), and, the Lord preserve us, they would learn
of the affair at once. So say just `a Collegiate
Assessor,' or, better, `a gentleman ranking as Major.”'
“Has a household serf of yours absconded, then?”
“A household serf of mine? As though even a
household serf would perpetrate such a crime as the
present one! No, indeed! It is my nose that has
absconded from me.”
“Gospodin Nossov, Gospodin Nossov? Indeed a
strange name, that!13 Then has this Gospodin Nossov
robbed you of some money?”
“I said nose, not Nossov. You are making a
mistake. There has disappeared, goodness knows
whither, my nose, my own actual nose. Presumably it
is trying to make a fool of me.”
“But how could it so disappear? The matter has
something about it which I do not fully understand.”
“I cannot tell you the exact how. The point is that
now the nose is driving about the city, and giving
itself out for a State Councilor. — wherefore I beg
you to announce that anyone apprehending any such
nose ought at once, in the shortest possible space of
time, to return it to myself. Surely you can judge
8
what it is for me meanwhile to be lacking such a
conspicuous portion of my frame? For a nose is not
like a toe which one can keep inside a boot, and hide
the absence of if it is not there. Besides, every
Thursday I am due to call upon Madame Chektareva
(wife of the State Councilor); whilst Pelagea
Grigorievna Podtochina (wife of the Staff-Officer,
mother of a pretty daughter) also is one of my closest
acquaintances. So, again, judge for yourself how I am
situated at present. In such a condition as this I could
not possibly present myself before the ladies named.”
Upon that the clerk became thoughtful: the fact was
clear from his tightly compressed lips alone.
“No,” he said at length. “Insert such an
announcement I cannot.”
“But why not?”
“Because, you see, it might injure the paper's
reputation. Imagine if everyone were to start
proclaiming a disappearance of his nose! People
would begin to say that, that — well, that we printed
absurdities and false tales.”
“But how is this matter a false tale? Nothing of the
sort has it got about it.”
“You think not; but only last week a similar case
occurred. One day a chinovnik brought us an
advertisement as you have done. The cost would have
been only two rubles, seventy-three kopeks, for all
that it seemed to signify was the running away of a
poodle. Yet what was it, do you think, in reality?
Why, the thing turned out to be a libel, and the
‘poodle’ in question a cashier — of what department
precisely I do not know.”
“Yes, but here am I advertising not about a poodle,
but about my own nose, which, surely, is, for all
intents and purposes, myself?”
“All the same, I cannot insert the advertisement.”
“Even when actually I have lost my own nose!”
“The fact that your nose is gone is a matter for a
doctor. There are doctors, I have heard, who can fit
one out with any sort of nose one likes. I take it that
by nature you are a wag, and like playing jokes in
public.”
“That is not so. I swear it as God is holy. In fact, as
things have gone so far, I will let you see for
yourself.”
“Why trouble?” Here the clerk took some snuff
before adding with, nevertheless, a certain movement
of curiosity: “However, if it really won't trouble you
at all, a sight of the spot would gratify me.”
The Collegiate Assessor removed the handkerchief.
“Strange indeed! Very strange indeed!” the clerk
exclaimed. “And the patch is as uniform as a newly
fried pancake, almost unbelievably uniform.”
“So you will dispute what I say no longer? Then
surely you cannot but put the announcement into
print. I shall be extremely grateful to you, and glad
that the present occasion has given me such a
pleasure as the making of your acquaintance” —
whence it will be seen that for once the Major had
decided to climb down.
“To print what you want is nothing much,” the
clerk replied. “Yet frankly I cannot see how you are
going to benefit from the step. I would suggest,
rather, that you commission a skilled writer to
compose an article describing this as a rare product of
nature, and have the article published in The
Northern Bee” (here the clerk took more snuff),
“either for the instruction of our young” (the clerk
wiped his nose for a finish) “or as a matter of general
interest.”
This again depressed the Collegiate Assessor: and
even though, on his eyes happening to fall upon a
copy of the newspaper, and reach the column
assigned to theatrical news, and encounter the name
of a beautiful actress, so that he almost broke into a
smile, and a hand began to finger a pocket for a
Treasury note (since he held that only stalls were
seats befitting Majors and so forth) — although all
this was so, there again recurred to him the thought of
the nose, and everything again became spoilt.
Even the clerk seemed touched with the
awkwardness of Kovalev's plight, and wishful to
lighten with a few sympathetic words the Collegiate
Assessor's depression.
“I am sorry indeed that this has befallen,” he said.
“Should you care for a pinch of this? Snuff can
dissipate both headache and low spirits. Nay, it is
good for hemorrhoids as well.”
And he proffered his box-deftly, as he did so,
folding back underneath it the lid depicting a lady in
a hat.
Kovalev lost his last shred of patience at the
thoughtless act, and said heatedly:
“How you can think fit thus to jest I cannot
imagine. For surely you perceive me no longer to be
in possession of a means of sniffing? Oh, you and
your snuff can go to hell! Even the sight of it is more
than I can bear. I should say the same even if you
were offering me, not wretched birch bark, but real
rapée.”
Greatly incensed, he rushed out of the office, and
made for the ward police inspector's residence.
Unfortunately he arrived at the very moment when
the inspector, after a yawn and a stretch, was
reflecting: “Now for two hours' sleep!” In short, the
Collegiate Assessor's visit chanced to be exceedingly
ill-timed. Incidentally, the inspector, though a great
patron of manufacturers and the arts, preferred still
more a Treasury note.
“That's the thing!” he frequently would say. “It's a
thing which can't be beaten anywhere, for it wants
nothing at all to eat, and it takes up very little room,
9
and it fits easily to the pocket, and it doesn't break in
pieces if it happens to be dropped.”
So the inspector received Kovalev very drily, and
intimated that just after dinner was not the best
moment for beginning an inquiry — nature had
ordained that one should rest after food (which
showed the Collegiate Assessor that at least the
inspector had some knowledge of sages' old saws),
and that in any case no one would purloin the nose of
a really respectable man.
Yes, the inspector gave it Kovalev between the
eyes. And as it should be added that Kovalev was
extremely sensitive where his title or his dignity was
concerned (though he readily pardoned anything said
against himself personally, and even held, with
regard to stage plays, that, whilst Staff-Officers
should not be assailed, officers of lesser rank might
be referred to), the police inspector's reception so
took him aback that, in a dignified way, and with
hands set apart a little, he nodded, remarked: “After
your insulting observations there is nothing which I
wish to add,” and betook himself away again.
He reached home scarcely hearing his own
footsteps. Dusk had fallen, and, after the unsuccessful
quests, his flat looked truly dreary. As he entered the
hall he perceived Ivan, his valet, to be lying on his
back on the stained old leather divan, and spitting at
the ceiling with not a little skill as regards
successively hitting the same spot. The man's
coolness rearoused Kovalev's ire, and, smacking him
over the head with his hat, he shouted:
“You utter pig! You do nothing but play the fool.”
Leaping up, Ivan hastened to take his master's cloak.
The tired and despondent Major then sought his
sitting-room, threw himself into an easy-chair,
sighed, and said to himself:
“My God, my God! why has this misfortune come
upon me? Even loss of hands or feet would have been
better, for a man without a nose is the devil knows
what — a bird, but not a bird, a citizen, but not a
citizen, a thing just to be thrown out of window. It
would have been better, too, to have had my nose cut
off in action, or in a duel, or through my own act:
whereas here is the nose gone with nothing to show
for it — uselessly — for not a groat's profit! — No,
though,” he added after thought, “it's not likely that
the nose is gone for good: it's not likely at all. And
quite probably I am dreaming all this, or am fuddled.
It may be that when I came home yesterday I drank
the vodka with which I rub my chin after shaving
instead of water — snatched up the stuff because that
fool Ivan was not there to receive me.”
So he sought to ascertain whether he might not be
drunk by pinching himself till he fairly yelled. Then,
certain, because of the pain, that he was acting and
living in waking life, he approached the mirror with
diffidence, and once more scanned himself with a
sort of inward hope that the nose might by this time
be showing as restored. But the result was merely
that he recoiled and muttered:
“What an absurd spectacle still!”
Ah, it all passed his understanding! If only a button,
or a silver spoon, or a watch, or some such article
were gone, rather than that anything had disappeared
like this — for no reason, and in his very flat!
Eventually, having once more reviewed the
circumstances, he reached the final conclusion that he
should most nearly hit the truth in supposing
Madame Podtochina (wife of the Staff-Officer, of
course — the lady who wanted him to become her
daughter's husband) to have been the prime agent in
the affair. True, he had always liked dangling in the
daughter's wake, but also he had always fought shy of
really coming down to business. Even when the
Staff-Officer's lady had said point blank that she
desired him to become her son-in-law he had put her
off with his compliments, and replied that the
daughter was still too young, and himself due yet to
perform five years service, and aged only forty-two.
Yes, the truth must be that out of revenge the StaffOfficer's wife had resolved to ruin him, and hired a
band of witches for the purpose, seeing that the nose
could not conceivably have been cut off — no one
had entered his private room lately, and, after being
shaved by Ivan Yakovlevitch on the Wednesday, he
had the nose intact, he knew and remembered well,
throughout both the rest of the Wednesday and the
day following. Also, if the nose had been cut off, pain
would have resulted, and also a wound, and the place
could not have healed so quickly, and become of the
uniformity of a pancake.
Next, the Major made his plans. Either he would
sue the Staff-Officer's lady in legal form or he would
pay her a surprise visit, and catch her in a trap. Then
the foregoing reflections were cut short by a glimmer
showing through the chink of the door — a sign that
Ivan had just lit a candle in the hall: and presently
Ivan himself appeared, carrying the candle in front of
him, and throwing the room into such clear radiance
that Kovalev had hastily to snatch up the
handkerchief again, and once more cover the place
where the nose had been but yesterday, lest the stupid
fellow should be led to stand gaping at the
monstrosity on his master's features.
Ivan had just returned to his cupboard when an
unfamiliar voice in the hall inquired:
“Is this where Collegiate Assessor Kovalev lives?”
“It is,” Kovalev shouted, leaping to his feet, and
flinging wide the door. “Come in, will you?”
Upon which there entered a police-officer of smart
exterior, with whiskers neither light nor dark, and
cheeks nicely plump. As a matter of fact, he was the
10
police-officer whom Ivan Yakovlevitch had met at
the end of the Isaakievsky Bridge.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “but have you lost
your nose?”
“I have — just so.”
“Then the nose is found.”
“What?” For a moment or two joy deprived Major
Kovalev of further speech. All that he could do was
to stand staring, open-eyed, at the officer's plump lips
and cheeks, and at the tremulant beams which the
candlelight kept throwing over them. “Then how did
it come about?”
“Well, by the merest chance the nose was found
beside a roadway. Already it had entered a
stagecoach, and was about to leave for Riga with a
passport made out in the name of a certain chinovnik.
And, curiously enough, I myself, at first, took it to be
a gentleman. Luckily, though, I had my eyeglasses on
me. Soon, therefore, I perceived the ‘gentleman’ to
be no more than a nose. Such is my shortness of
sight, you know, that even now, though I see you
standing there before me, and see that you have a
face, I cannot distinguish on that face the nose, the
chin, or anything else. My mother-in-law (my wife's
mother) too cannot easily distinguish details.”
Kovalev felt almost beside himself.
“Where is the nose now?” cried he. “Where, I ask?
Let me go to it at once.”
“Do not trouble, sir. Knowing how greatly you
stand in need of it, I have it with me. It is a curious
fact, too, that the chief agent in the affair has been a
rascal of a barber who lives on the Vozkresensky
Prospekt, and now is sitting at the police station. For
long past I had suspected him of drunkenness and
theft, and only three days ago he took away from a
shop a button-card. Well, you will find your nose to
be as before.
And the officer delved into a pocket, and drew
thence the nose, wrapped in paper.
“Yes, that's the nose all right!” Kovalev shouted.
“It's the nose precisely! Will you join me in a cup of
tea?”
“I should have accounted it indeed a pleasure if I
had been able, but, unfortunately, I have to go
straight on to the penitentiary. Provisions, sir, have
risen greatly in price. And living with me I have not
only my family, but my mother-in-law (my wife's
mother). Yet the eldest of my children gives me
much hope. He is a clever lad. The only thing is that I
have not the means for his proper education.”
When the officer was gone the Collegiate Assessor
sat plunged in vagueness, plunged in inability to see
or to feel, so greatly was he overcome with joy. Only
after a while did he with care take the thus recovered
nose in cupped hands, and again examine it
attentively.
“It, undoubtedly. It, precisely,” he said at length.
“Yes, and it even has on it the pimple to the left
which broke out on me yesterday.”
Sheerly he laughed in his delight.
But nothing lasts long in this world. Even joy
grows less lively the next moment. And a moment
later, again, it weakens further. And at last it
reemerges insensibly with the normal mood, even as
the ripple from a pebble's impact becomes reemerged
with the smooth surface of the water at large. So
Kovalev relapsed into thought again. For by now he
had realized that even yet the affair was not wholly
ended, seeing that, though retrieved, the nose needed
to be re-stuck.
“What if it should fail so to stick!”
The bare question thus posed turned the Major pale.
Feeling, somehow, very nervous, he drew the
mirror closer to him, lest he should fit the nose awry.
His hands were trembling as gently, very carefully he
lifted the nose in place. But, oh, horrors, it would not
remain in place! He held it to his lips, warmed it with
his breath, and again lifted it to the patch between his
cheeks — only to find, as before, that it would not
retain its position.
“Come, come, fool!” said he. “Stop where you are,
I tell you.”
But the nose, obstinately wooden, fell upon the
table with a strange sound as of a cork, whilst the
Major's face became convulsed.
“Surely it is not too large now?” he reflected in
terror. Yet as often as he raised it towards its proper
position the new attempt proved as vain as the last.
Loudly he shouted for Ivan, and sent for a doctor
who occupied a flat (a better one than the Major's) on
the first floor. The doctor was a fine-looking man
with splendid, coal-black whiskers. Possessed of a
healthy, comely wife, he ate some raw apples every
morning, and kept his mouth extraordinarily clean —
rinsed it out, each morning, for three-quarters of an
hour, and polished its teeth with five different sorts of
brushes. At once he answered Kovalev's summons,
and, after asking how long ago the calamity had
happened, tilted the Major's chin, and rapped the
vacant site with a thumb until at last the Major
wrenched his head away, and, in doing so, struck it
sharply against the wall behind. This, the doctor said,
was nothing; and after advising him to stand a little
farther from the wall, and bidding him incline his
head to the right, he once more rapped the vacant
patch before, after bidding him incline his head to the
left, dealing him, with a “Hm!” such a thumb-dig as
left the Major standing like a horse which is having
its teeth examined.
The doctor, that done, shook his head.
“The thing is not feasible,” he pronounced. “You
had better remain as you are rather than go farther
11
and fare worse. Of course, I could stick it on again —
I could do that for you in a moment; but at the same
time I would assure you that your plight will only
become worse as the result.”
“Never mind,” Kovalev replied. “Stick it on again,
pray. How can I continue without a nose? Besides,
things could not possibly be worse than they are now.
At present they are the devil himself. Where can I
show this caricature of a face? My circle of
acquaintances is a large one: this very night I am due
in two houses, for I know a great many people like
Madame Chektareva (wife of the State Councilor.),
Madame Podtochina (wife of the Staff-Officer), and
others. Of course, though, I shall have nothing further
to do with Madame Podtochina (except through the
police) after her present proceedings. Yes,”
persuasively he went on, “I beg of you to do me the
favor requested. Surely there are means of doing it
permanently? Stick it on in any sort of a fashion — at
all events so that it will hold fast, even if not
becomingly. And then, when risky moments occur, I
might even support it gently with my hand, and
likewise dance no more — anything to avoid fresh
injury through an unguarded movement. For the rest,
you may feel assured that I shall show you my
gratitude for this visit so far as ever my means will
permit.”
“Believe me,” the doctor replied, neither too loudly
nor too softly, but just with incisiveness and magnetic
force, “when I say that I never attend patients for
money. To do that would be contrary alike to my
rules and to my art. When I accept a fee for a visit I
accept it only lest I offend through a refusal. Again I
say — this time on my honor, as you will not believe
my plain word — that, though I could easily re-affix
your nose, the proceeding would make things worse,
far worse, for you. It would be better for you to trust
merely to the action of nature. Wash often in cold
water, and I assure you that you will be as healthy
without a nose as with one. This nose here I should
advise you to put into a jar of spirit: or, better still, to
steep in two tablespoonfuls of stale vodka and strong
vinegar. Then you will be able to get a good sum for
it. Indeed, I myself will take the thing if you consider
it of no value.”
“No, no!” shouted the distracted Major. “Not on
any account will I sell it. I would rather it were lost
again.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon.” And the doctor bowed.
“My only idea had been to serve you. What is it you
want? Well, you have seen me do what I could.”
And majestically he withdrew. Kovalev,
meanwhile, had never once looked at his face. In his
distraction he had noticed nothing beyond a pair of
snowy cuffs projecting from black sleeves.
He decided, next, that, before lodging a plea next
day, he would write and request the Staff-Officer's
lady to restore him his nose without publicity. His
letter ran as follows:
DEAR MADAME ALEXANDRA
GRIGORIEVNA, I am at a loss to understand your
strange conduct. At least, however, you may rest
assured that you will benefit nothing by it, and that it
will in no way further force me to marry your
daughter. Believe me, I am now aware of all the
circumstances connected with my nose, and know
that you alone have been the prime agent in them.
The nose's sudden disappearance, its subsequent
gaddings about, its masqueradings as, firstly, a
chinovnik and, secondly, itself — all these have
come of witchcraft practiced either by you or by
adepts in pursuits of a refinement equal to your own.
This being so, I consider it my duty herewith to warn
you that if the nose should not this very day reassume
its correct position, I shall be forced to have resort to
the law's protection and defense. With all respect, I
have the honor. to remain your very humble servant,
PLATON KOVALEV.
“MY DEAR SIR,” wrote the lady in return, “your
letter has greatly surprised me, and I will say frankly
that I had not expected it, and least of all its unjust
reproaches. I assure you that I have never at any time
allowed the chinovnik whom you mention to enter
my house — either masquerading or as himself. True,
I have received calls from Philip Ivanovitch
Potanchikov, who, as you know, is seeking my
daughter's hand, and, besides, is a man steady and
upright, as well as learned; but never, even so, have I
given him reason to hope. You speak, too, of a nose.
If that means that I seem to you to have desired to
leave you with a nose and nothing else, that is to say,
to return you a direct refusal of my daughter's hand, I
am astonished at your words, for, as you cannot but
be aware, my inclination is quite otherwise. So now,
if still you wish for a formal betrothal to my
daughter, I will readily, I do assure you, satisfy your
desire, which all along has been, in the most lively
manner, my own also. In hopes of that, I remain
yours sincerely, ALEXANDRA PODTOCHINA.
“No, no!” Kovalev exclaimed, after reading the
missive. “She, at least, is not guilty. Oh, certainly
not!
No one who had committed such a crime could write
such a letter.” The Collegiate Assessor was the more
expert in such matters because more than once he had
been sent to the Caucasus to institute prosecutions.
“Then by what sequence of chances has the affair
happened? Only the devil could say!”
His hands fell in bewilderment.
12
It had not been long before news of the strange
occurrence had spread through the capital. And, of
course, it received additions with the progress of
time. Everyone's mind was, at that period, bent upon
the marvelous. Recently experiments with the action
of magnetism had occupied public attention, and the
history of the dancing chairs of Koniushennaia Street
also was fresh. So no one could wonder when it
began to be said that the nose of Collegiate Assessor
Kovalev could be seen promenading the Nevski
Prospekt at three o'clock, or when a crowd of curious
sightseers gathered there. Next, someone declared
that the nose, rather, could be beheld at Junker's
store, and the throng which surged thither became so
massed as to necessitate a summons to the police.
Meanwhile a speculator of highly respectable aspect
and whiskers who sold stale cakes at the entrance to a
theater knocked together some stout wooden benches,
and invited the curious to stand upon them for eighty
kopeks each; whilst a retired colonel who came out
early to see the show, and penetrated the crowd only
with great difficulty, was disgusted when in the
window of the store he beheld, not a nose, but merely
an ordinary woolen waistcoat flanked by the selfsame
lithograph of a girl pulling up a stocking, whilst a
dandy with cutaway waistcoat and receding chin
peeped at her from behind a tree, which had hung
there for ten years past.
“Dear me!” irritably he exclaimed. “How come
people so to excite themselves about stupid,
improbable reports?”
Next, word had it that the nose was walking, not on
the Nevski Prospekt, but in the Taurida Park, and, in
fact, had been in the habit of doing so for a long
while past, so that even in the days when Khozrev
Mirza had lived near there he had been greatly
astonished at the freak of nature. This led students to
repair thither from the College of Medicine, and a
certain eminent, respected lady to write and ask the
Warden of the Park to show her children the
phenomenon, and, if possible, add to the
demonstration a lesson of edifying and instructive
tenor.
Naturally, these events greatly pleased also
gentlemen who frequented routs, since those
gentlemen wished to entertain the ladies, and their
resources had become exhausted. Only a few solid,
worthy persons deprecated it all. One such person
even said, in his disgust, that comprehend how
foolish inventions of the sort could circulate in such
an enlightened age he could not — that, in fact, he
was surprised that the Government had not turned its
attention to the matter. From which utterance it will
be seen that the person in question was one of those
who would have dragged the Government into
anything on earth, including even their daily quarrels
with their wives.
Next — —
But again events here become enshrouded in mist.
What happened after that is unknown to all men.
[12] Formerly the “Whiteley's” of St. Petersburg.
[13] Nose is noss in Russian, and Gospodin
equivalent to the English “Mr.”
III
Farce really does occur in this world, and,
sometimes, farce altogether without an element of
probability. Thus, the nose which lately had gone
about as a State Councilor., and stirred all the city,
suddenly reoccupied its proper place (between the
two cheeks of Major Kovalev) as though nothing at
all had happened. The date was 7 April, and when,
that morning, the major awoke as usual, and, as
usual, threw a despairing glance at the mirror, he this
time, beheld before him, what? — why, the nose
again! Instantly he took hold of it. Yes, the nose, the
nose precisely! “Aha!” he shouted, and, in his joy,
might have executed a trepak about the room in bare
feet had not Ivan's entry suddenly checked him. Then
he had himself furnished with materials for washing,
washed, and glanced at the mirror again. Oh, the nose
was there still! So next he rubbed it vigorously with
the towel. Ah, still it was there, the same as ever!
“Look, Ivan,” he said. “Surely there is a pimple on
my nose?” But meanwhile he was thinking: “What if
he should reply: `You are wrong, sir. Not only is
there not a pimple to be seen, but not even a nose'?”
However, all that Ivan said was:
“Not a pimple, sir, that isn't. The nose is clear all
over.”
“Good!” the Major reflected, and snapped his
fingers. At the same moment Barber Ivan
Yakovlevitch peeped round the door. He did so as
timidly as a cat which has just been whipped for
stealing cream.
“Tell me first whether your hands are clean?” the
Major cried.
“They are, sir.”
“You lie, I'll be bound.”
“By God, sir, I do not!”
“Then go carefully.'
As soon as Kovalev had seated himself in position
Ivan Yakovlevitch vested him in a sheet, and plied
brush upon chin and a portion of a cheek until they
looked like the blanc mange served on tradesmen's
namedays.
“Ah, you!” Here Ivan Yakovlevitch glanced at the
nose. Then he bent his head askew, and contemplated
the nose from a position on the flank. “It looks right
13
enough,” finally he commented, but eyed the member
for quite a little while longer before carefully, so
gently as almost to pass the imagination, he lifted two
fingers towards it, in order to grasp its tip — such
always being his procedure.
“Come, come! Do mind!” came in a shout from
Kovalev. Ivan Yakovlevitch let fall his hands, and
stood disconcerted, dismayed as he had never been
before. But at last he started scratching the razor
lightly under the chin, and, despite the unhandiness
and difficulty of shaving in that quarter without also
grasping the organ of smell, contrived, with the aid of
a thumb planted firmly upon the cheek and the lower
gum, to overcome all obstacles, and bring the shave
to a finish.
Everything thus ready, Kovalev dressed, called a
cab, and set out for the restaurant. He had not crossed
the threshold before he shouted: “Waiter! A cup of
chocolate!” Then he sought a mirror, and looked at
himself. The nose was still in place! He turned round
in cheerful mood, and, with eves contracted slightly,
bestowed a bold, satirical scrutiny upon two military
men, one of the noses on whom was no larger than a
waistcoat button. Next, he sought the chancery of the
department where he was agitating to obtain a ViceGovernorship (or, failing that, an Administratorship),
and, whilst passing through the reception vestibule,
again surveyed himself in a mirror. As much in place
as ever the nose was!
Next, he went to call upon a brother Collegiate
Assessor, a brother “Major.” This colleague of his
was a great satirist, but Kovalev always met his
quarrelsome remarks merely with: “Ah, you! I know
you, and know what a wag you are.”
Whilst proceeding thither he reflected:
“At least, if the Major doesn't burst into laughter on
seeing me, I shall know for certain that all is in order
again.
And this turned out to be so, for the colleague said
nothing at all on the subject.
“Splendid, damn it all!” was Kovalev's inward
comment.
In the street, on leaving the colleague's, he met
Madame Podtochina, and also Madame Podtochina's
daughter. Bowing to them, he was received with
nothing but joyous exclamations. Clearly all had been
fancy, no harm had been done. So not only did he
talk quite a while to the ladies, but he took special
care, as he did so, to produce his snuffbox, and
deliberately plug his nose at both entrances.
Meanwhile inwardly he said:
“There now, good ladies! There now, you couple of
hens! I'm not going to marry the daughter, though.
All this is just — par amour, allow me.”
And from that time onwards Major Kovalev gadded
about the same as before. He walked on the Nevski
Prospekt, and he visited theaters, and he showed
himself everywhere. And always the nose
accompanied him the same as before, and evinced no
signs of again purposing a departure. Great was his
good humor, replete was he with smiles, intent was
he upon pursuit of fair ladies. Once, it was noted, he
even halted before a counter of the Gusting Dvor, and
there purchased the ribbon of an order. Why precisely
he did so is not known, for of no order was he a
knight.
To think of such an affair happening in this our vast
empire's northern capital! Yet general opinion
decided that the affair had about it much of the
improbable. Leaving out of the question the nose's
strange, unnatural removal, and its subsequent
appearance as a State Councilor., how came Kovalev
not to know that one ought not to advertise for a nose
through a newspaper? Not that I say this because I
consider newspaper charges for announcements
excessive. No, that is nothing, and I do not belong to
the number of the mean. I say it because such a
proceeding would have been gauche, derogatory, not
the thing. And how came the nose into the baked
roll? And what of Ivan Yakovlevitch? Oh, I cannot
understand these points — absolutely I cannot. And
the strangest, most unintelligible fact of all is that
authors actually can select such occurrences for their
subject! I confess this too to pass my comprehension,
to — — But no; I will say just that I do not
understand it. In the first place, a course of the sort
never benefits the country. And in the second place
— in the second place, a course of the sort never
benefits anything at all. I cannot divine the use of it.
Yet, even considering these things; even conceding
this, that, and the other (for where are not
incongruities found at times?) there may have, after
all, been something in the affair. For no matter what
folk say to the contrary, such affairs do happen in this
world — rarely of course, yet none the less really.
_______________________________________
Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Joel Chandler Harris www.world-english.org
One evening recently, the lady whom Uncle Remus
calls “Miss Sally” missed her little seven-year-old.
Making search for him through the house and
through the yard, she heard the sound of voices in the
old man’s cabin, and looking through the window,
saw the child sitting by Uncle Remus. His head
rested against the old man’s arm, and he was gazing
with an expression of the most intense interest into
the rough, weather-beaten face that beamed so kindly
upon him. This is what “Miss Sally” heard:
14
“Bimeby, one day, after Brer Fox bin doin’ all dat he
could fer ter ketch Brer Rabbit, en Brer Rabbit bin
doin’ all he could fer ter keep ’im fum it, Brer Fox
say to hisse’f dat he’d put up a game on Brer Rabbit,
en he ain’t mo’n got de wuds out’n his mouf twel
Brer Rabbit come a-lopin’ up de big road, lookin’ des
ez plump en ez fat en ez sassy ez a Moggin hoss in a
barley-patch.
“‘Hol’ on dar, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘I ain’t got time, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee,
sorter mendin’ his licks.
“‘I wanter have some confab wid you, Brer Rabbit,’
sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘All right, Brer Fox, but you better holler fum whar
you stan’: I’m monstus full er fleas dis mawnin’,’ sez
Brer Rabbit, sezee.
“‘I seed Brer B’ar yistiddy,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en
he sorter raked me over de coals kaze you en me ain’t
make frens en live naberly, en I told him dat I’d see
you.’
“Den Brer Rabbit scratch one year wid his off hinefoot sorter jub’usly, en den he ups en sez, sezee:
“‘All a-settin’, Brer Fox. S’posen you drap roun’ termorrer en take dinner wid me. We ain’t got no great
doin’s at our house, but I speck de ole ’oman en de
chilluns kin sort o’ scramble roun’ en git up sump’n
fer ter stay yo’ stummuck.’
“‘I’m ’gree’ble, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘Den I’ll ’pen on you,’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee.
“Nex’ day, Mr. Rabbit an’ Miss Rabbit got up soon,
’fo day, en raided on a gyarden like Miss Sally’s out
dar, en got some cabbiges, en some roas’n-years, en
some sparrer-grass, en dey fix up a smashin’ dinner.
Bimeby one er de little Rabbits, playin’ out in de
backyard, come runnin’ in hollerin’, ‘Oh, ma! oh,
ma! I seed Mr. Fox a-comin’!’ En den Brer Rabbit he
tuck de chilluns by der years en make um set down,
and den him en Miss Rabbit sorter dally roun’ waitin’
for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin’, but no Brer
Fox ain’t come. Atter while Brer Rabbit goes to de
do’, easy like, en peep out, en dar, stickin’ out fum
behime de cornder, wuz de tip-een’ er Brer Fox’s tail.
Den Brer Rabbit shot de do’ en sot down, en put his
paws behime his years, en begin fer ter sing:
“‘De place wharbouts you spill de grease,
Right dar youer boun’ ter slide,
An’ whar you fine a bunch er ha’r,
You’ll sholy fine de hide!”’
“Nex’ day Brer Fox sont word by Mr. Mink en skuze
hisse’f kaze he wuz too sick fer ter come, en he ax
Brer Rabbit fer ter come en take dinner wid him, en
Brer Rabbit say he wuz ’gree’ble.
“Bimeby, w’en de shadders wuz at der shortes’, Brer
Rabbit he sorter brush up en santer down ter Brer
Fox’s house, en w’en he got dar he yer somebody
groanin’, en he look in de do’, en dar he see Brer Fox
settin’ up in a rockin’-cheer all wrop up wid flannil,
en he look mighty weak. Brer Rabbit look all roun’,
he did, but he ain’t see no dinner. De dish-pan wuz
settin’ on de table, en close by wuz a kyarvin-knife.
“‘Look like you gwineter have chicken fer dinner,
Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.
“‘Yes, Brer Rabbit, deyer nice en fresh en tender,’
sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“Den Brer Rabbit sorter pull his mustarsh, en say,
‘You ain’t got no’ calamus-root, is you, Brer Fox? I
done got so now dat I can’t eat no’ chicken ’ceppin’
she’s seasoned up wid calamus-root.’ En wid dat Brer
Rabbit lipt out er de do’ and dodge ’mong de bushes,
en sot dar watchin’ fer Brer Fox; en he ain’t watch
long, nudder, kaze Brer Fox flung off de flannil en
crope out er de house en got whar he could close in
on Brer Rabbit, en bimeby Brer Rabbit holler out,
‘Oh, Brer Fox! I’ll des put yo’ calamus-root out yer
on dis yer stump. Better come git it while hit’s fresh.’
And wid dat Brer Rabbit gallop off home. En Brer
Fox ain’t never kotch ’im yit, en w’at’s mo’, honey,
he ain’t gwineter.”
“Didn’t the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle
Remus?” asked the little boy the next evening.
“He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho’s you bawn—
Brer Fox did. One day arter Brer Rabbit fool ’im wid
dat calamus-root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en got ’im
some tar, en mix it wid some turken-time, en fix up a
contrapshun what he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish
yer Tar-Baby en he sot ’er in de big road, en den he
lay off in de bushes fer ter see wat de news wuz
gwineter be. En he didn’t hatter wait long, nudder,
kaze bimeby here come Brer Rabbit pacin’ down de
road—lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity—des ez sassy
ez a jay-bird. Brer Fox he lay low. Brer Rabbit come
prancin’ ’long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den he
fotch up on his behime legs like he was ’stonished.
De Tar-Baby she sot dar, she did, en Brer Fox he lay
low.
15
“‘Mawnin’!’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; ‘nice wedder dis
mawnin’,’ sezee.
“Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ en Brer Fox he lay
low.
“‘How duz yo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?’ sez
Brer Rabbit, sezee.
“Brer Fox he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en de
Tar-Baby she ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
“‘How you come on, den? Is you deaf?’ sez Brer
Rabbit, sezee. ‘Kaze if you is I kin holler louder,’
sezee.
“Tar-Baby lay still, en Brer Fox he lay low.
“‘Youer stuck up, dat’s w’at you is,’ says Brer
Rabbit, sezee, ‘en I’m gwineter kyore you, dat’s w’at
I’m a-gwineter do,’ sezee.
“Brer Fox he sorter chuckle in his stummuck, he did,
but Tar-Baby ain’t sayin’ nuthin’.
“‘I’m gwineter larn you howter talk ter ’specttubble
fokes ef hit’s de las ’ack,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Ef
you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m
gwineter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee.
“Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox he lay low.
“Brer Rabbit keep on axin’ ’im, en de Tar-Baby she
keep on sayin’ nuthin’, twel present’y Brer Rabbit
draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck er side
er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlassesjug. His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt
him. But Tar-Baby she stay still, en Brer Fox he lay
low.
“‘Ef you don’t lemme loose, I’ll knock you ag’in,’
sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; en wid dat he fotch ’er a wipe
wid te udder han’, en dat stuck. Tar-Baby she ain’t
sayin’ nuthin’, en Brer Fox he lay low.
“‘Tu’n me loose, of’ I kick de natal stuffin’ outen
you,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee; but de Tar-Baby she
ain’t sayin’ nuthin’. She des hilt on, en den Brer
Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same way. Brer
Fox he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit squall out dat ef de
Tar-Baby don’t tu’n ’im loose he butt ’er crank-sided.
En den he butted, en his head got stuck. Den Brer
Fox he santered fort’, lookin’ des ez innercent ez
wunner yo’ mammy’s mockin’-birds.
“‘Howdy, Brer Rabbit?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘You
look sorter stuck up dis mawnin’,’ sezee; en den he
rolled on de groun’, en laft en laft twel he couldn’t
laff no mo’. ‘I speck you’ll take dinner wid me dis
time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in some calamus-root,
en I ain’t gwineter take no skuse,’ sez Brer Fox,
sezee.”
Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a two-pound
yam out of the ashes.
“Did the fox eat the rabbit?” asked the little boy to
whom the story had been told.
“Dat’s all de fur de tale goes,” replied the old man.
“He mout, en den ag’in he moutent. Some say Jedge
B’ar come ’long en loosed ’im; some say he didn’t. I
hear Miss Sally callin’. You better run ’long.”…
“Uncle Remus,” said the little boy one evening, when
he had found the old man with little or nothing to do,
“did the fox kill and eat the rabbit when he caught
him with the Tar-Baby?”
“Law, honey, ain’t I tell you ’bout dat?” replied the
old darky, chuckling slyly. “I ’clar ter grashus I ought
er tole you dat; but ole man Nod wuz ridin’ on my
eyelids twel a leetle mo’n I’d ’a’ dis’member’d my
own name, en den on to dat here come yo’ mammy
hollerin’ atter you.
“W’at I tell you w’en I fus’ begin? I tole you Brer
Rabbit wuz a monstus soon beas’; leas’ways dat’s
w’at I laid out fer ter tell you. Well, den, honey, don’t
you go en make no udder kalkalashuns, kaze in dem
days Brer Rabbit en his family wuz at de head er de
gang w’en enny racket wuz on han’, en dar dey
stayed. ’Fo’ you begins fer ter wipe yo’ eyes ’bout
Brer Rabbit, you wait en see whar’bouts Brer Rabbit
gwineter fetch up at. But dat’s needer yer ner dar.
“W’en Brer Fox fine Brer Rabbit mixt up wid de TarBaby, he feel mighty good, en he roll on de groun’ en
laff. Bimeby he up ’n’ say, sezee:
“Well, I speck I got you dis time, Brer Rabbit,’ sezee;
‘maybe I ain’t but I speck I is. You been runnin’
roun’ here sassin’ atter me a mighty long time, but I
speck you done come ter de een’ er de row. You bin
cuttin’ up yo’ capers en bouncin’ roun’ in dis
naberhood ontwel you come ter b’leeve yo’se’f de
boss er de whole gang. En den youer allers some’rs
whar you got no bizness,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘Who
ax you fer ter come en strike up a ’quaintence wid
dish yer Tar-Baby? En who stuck you up dar whar
you iz? Nobody in de roun’ worril. You des tuck en
jam yo’se’f on dat Tar-Baby widout waitin’ fer enny
invite,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee—‘ en dar you is, en dar
you’ll stay twel I fixes up a bresh-pile and fires her
16
up, kaze I’m gwineter bobbycue you dis day, sho’,’
sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“Den Brer Rabbit talk mighty ’umble.
“‘I don’t keer w’at you do wid me, Brer Fox,’ sezee,
‘so you don’t fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas’ me,
Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘but don’t fling me in dat brierpatch,’ sezee.
“‘Hit’s so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,’ sez Brer
Fox, sezee, ‘dat I speck I’ll hatter hang you,’ sezee.
“‘Hang me des ez high ez you please, Brer Fox,’ sez
Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but do fer de Lord’s sake don’t
fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.
“‘I ain’t got no string,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en now I
speck I’ll hatter drown you,’ sezee.
“‘Drown me ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,’ sez
Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but don’t fling me in dat brierpatch,’ sezee.
“‘Dey ain’t no water nigh,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en
now I speck I’ll hatter skin you,’ sezee.
“‘Skin me, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘snatch
out my eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut
off my legs,’ sezee, ‘but do please, Brer Fox, don’t
fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.
“Co’se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he
kin, so he cotch him by de behime legs en slung ’im
right in de middle er de brier-patch. Dar wuz a
considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck de
bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hung roun’ fer ter see what
wuz gwineter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call
’im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin’
cross-legged on a chinkapin log koamin’ de pitch
outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer Fox know dat he
bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed
fer ter fling back some er his sass, en he holler out:
“‘Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox; bred en
bawn in a brier-patch!’ en wid dat he skip out des ez
lively ez a cricket in de embers.”
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How the Leopard Got His Spots Rudyard Kipling
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In the days when everybody started fair, Best
Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High
Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt, or the Bush
Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot
shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandycoloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish
grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and
the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there: and they
were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but
the Leopard, he was the 'sclusivest sandiestyellowest-brownest of them all -- a greyish-yellowish
catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the
'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the
High Veldt to one hair. This was very bad for the
Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of them: for he
would lie down by a 'sclusively yellowish-greyishbrownish stone or clump of grass, and when the
Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the Koodoo or
the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would
surprise them out of their jumpsome lives. He would
indeed! And, also, there was an Ethiopian with bows
and arrows (a 'sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish
man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt with
the Leopard: and the two used to hunt together -- the
Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the Leopard
'sclusively with his teeth and claws -- till the Giraffe
and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and
all the rest of them didn't know which way to jump,
Best Beloved. They didn't indeed!
After a long time -- things lived for ever so long in
those days -- they learned to avoid anything that
looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian: and bit by bit - the Giraffe began it, because his legs were the
longest -- they went away from the High Veldt. They
scuttled for days and days till they came to a great
forest, 'sclusively full of trees and bushes and stripy,
speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there they hid:
and after another long time, what with standing half
in the shade and half out of it, and what with the
slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them,
the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew stripy,
and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with little
wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a treetrunk: and so, though you could hear them and smell
them, you could very seldom see them, and then only
when you knew precisely where to look. They had a
beautiful time in the 'sclusively speckly-spickly
shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and the
Ethiopian ran about over the 'sclusively greyishyellowish-reddish High Veldt outside, wondering
where all their breakfasts and their dinners and their
teas had gone. At last they were so hungry that they
ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and
the Ethiopian, and then they had the Big Tummyache, both together: and then they met Baviaan -- the
dog-headed, barking baboon, who is Quite the Wisest
Animal in All South Africa.
Said the Leopard to Baviaan (and it was a very hot
17
day), 'Where has all the game gone?'
And Baviaan winked. He knew.
Said Ethiopian to Baviaan, 'Can you tell me the
present habitat of the aboriginal Fauna?' (That meant
just the same thing, but the Ethiopian always used
long words. He was a grown-up.)
And Baviaan winked. He knew.
Then said Baviaan, 'The game has gone into other
spots: and my advice to you, Leopard, is to go into
other spots as soon as you can.'
And the Ethiopian said, 'That is all very fine, but I
wish to know whither the aboriginal Fauna has
migrated.'
Then said Baviaan, 'The aboriginal Fauna has joined
the aboriginal Flora because it was high time for a
change; and my advice to you, Ethiopian, is to
change as soon as you can.'
That puzzled the Leopard and the Ethiopian, but they
set off to look for the aboriginal Flora, and presently,
after ever so many days, they saw a great, high, tall
forest full of tree-trunks all 'sclusively speckled and
sprottled and spottled, dotted and splashed and
slashed and hatched and cross-hatched with shadows.
(Say that quickly aloud, and you will see how very
shadowy the forest must have been.)
'What is this,' said the Leopard, 'that is so 'sclusively
dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?'
'I don't know,' said the Ethiopian, 'but it ought to be
the aboriginal Flora. I can smell Giraffe, and I can
hear Giraffe, but I can't see Giraffe.'
'That's curious,' said the Leopard. 'I suppose it is
because we have just come in out of the sunshine. I
can smell Zebra, and I can hear Zebra, but I can't see
Zebra.'
'Wait a bit,' said the Ethiopian. 'It's a long time since
we've hunted 'em. Perhaps we've forgotten what they
were like.'
'Fiddle!' said the Leopard. I remember them perfectly
on the High Veldt, especially their marrow- bones.
Giraffe is about seventeen feet high, of a 'sclusively
fulvous golden-yellow from head to heel: and Zebra
is about four and a half feet high, of a 'sclusively
grey-fawn colour from head to heel.'
'Umm,' said the Ethiopian, looking into the specklyspickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest. 'Then
they ought to show up in this dark place like ripe
bananas in a smoke-house.'
But they didn't. The Leopard and the Ethiopian
hunted all day; and though they could smell them and
hear them, they never saw one of them.
'For goodness' sake,' said the Leopard at tea-time, 'let
us wait till it gets dark. This daylight hunting is a
perfect scandal.'
So they waited till dark, and then the Leopard heard
something breathing sniffily in the starlight that fell
all stripy through the branches, and he jumped at the
noise, and it smelt like Zebra, and it felt like Zebra,
and when he knocked it down it kicked like Zebra,
but he couldn't see it. So he said, 'Be quiet, O you
person without any form. I am going to sit on your
head till morning, because there is something about
you that I don't understand.'
Presently he heard a grunt and a crash and a
scramble, and the Ethiopian called out, 'I've caught a
thing that I can't see. It smells like Giraffe, and it
kicks like Giraffe, but it hasn't any form.'
'Don't you trust it, said the Leopard. 'Sit on its head
till the morning -- same as me. They haven't any form
-- any of 'em.'
So they sat down on them hard till bright morningtime, and then Leopard said, 'What have you at your
end of the table, Brother?'
The Ethiopian scratched his head and said, 'It ought
to be 'sclusively a rich fulvous orange-tawny from
head to heel, and it ought to be Giraffe; but it is
covered all over with chestnut blotches. What have
you at your end of the table, Brother?'
And the Leopard scratched his head and said, 'It
ought to be 'sclusively a delicate greyish-fawn, and it
ought to be Zebra; but it is covered all over with
black and purple stripes. What in the world have you
been doing to yourself, Zebra? Don't you know that if
you were on the High Veldt I could see you ten miles
off? You haven't any form.'
'Yes,' said the Zebra, 'but this isn't the High Veldt.
Can't you see?'
'I can now,' said the Leopard, 'But I couldn't all
yesterday. How is it done?'
18
'Let us up,' said the Zebra, 'and we will show you.'
'What's the use of that?' said the Leopard.
They let the Zebra and the Giraffe get up; and Zebra
moved away to some little thorn-bushes where the
sunlight fell all stripy, and the Giraffe moved off to
some tallish trees where the shadows fell all blotchy.
'Think of Giraffe,' said the Ethiopian. 'Or if you
prefer stripes, think of Zebra. They find their spots
and stripes give them per-fect satisfaction.'
'Now watch,' said the Zebra and the Giraffe. 'This is
the way it's done. One -- two -- three! And where's
your breakfast?'
Leopard stared, and Ethiopian stared, but all they
could see were stripy shadows and blotched shadows
in the forest, but never a sign of Zebra and Giraffe.
They had just walked off and hidden themselves in
the shadowy forest.
'Hi! Hi!' said the Ethiopian. 'That's a trick worth
learning. Take a lesson by it, Leopard. You show up
in this dark place like a bar of soap in a coal-scuttle.'
'Ho! Ho!' said the Leopard. 'Would it surprise you
very much to know that you show up in this dark
place like a mustard-plaster on a sack of coals?'
'Well, calling names won't catch dinner,' said the
Ethiopian. 'The long and the little of it is that we don't
match our backgrounds. I'm going to take Baviaan's
advice. He told me I ought to change: and as I've
nothing to change except my skin I'm going to
change that.'
'Umm,' said the Leopard. 'I wouldn't look like Zebra - not for ever so.'
'Well, make up your mind,' said the Ethiopian,
'because I'd hate to go hunting without you, but I
must if you insist on looking like a sunflower against
a tarred fence.'
'I'll take spots, then,' said the Leopard; 'but don't
make 'em too vulgar-big. I wouldn't look like Giraffe
-- not for ever so.'
'I'll make 'em with the tips of my fingers,' said the
Ethiopian. 'There's plenty of black left on my skin
still. Stand over!'
Then the Ethiopian put his five fingers close together
(there was plenty of black left on his new skin still)
and pressed them all over the Leopard, and wherever
the five fingers touched they left five little black
marks, all close together. You can see them on any
Leopard's skin you like, Best Beloved. Sometimes the
fingers slipped and the marks got a little blurred; but
if you look closely at any Leopard now you will see
that there are always five spots -- off five black
finger-tips.
'What to?' said the Leopard, tremendously excited.
'To a nice working blackish-brownish colour, with a
little purple in it, and touches of slaty-blue. It will be
the very thing for hiding in hollows and behind trees.'
So he changed his skin then and there, and the
Leopard was more excited than ever: he had never
seen a man change his skin before.
'Now you are a beauty!' said the Ethiopian. 'You can
lie out on the bare ground and look like a heap of
pebbles. You can lie out on the naked rocks and look
like a piece of pudding-stone. You can lie out on a
leafy branch and look like sunshine sifting through
the leaves; and you can lie right across the centre of a
path and look like nothing in particular. Think of that
and purr!'
'But what about me?' she said, when the Ethiopian
had worked his last little finger into his fine new
black skin.
'But if I'm all this,' said the Leopard, 'why didn't you
go spotty too?'
'You take Baviaan's advice too. He told you to go
into spots.'
'Oh, plain black's best,' said the Ethiopian. 'Now
come along and we'll see if we can't get even with Mr
One-Two-Three-Where's-your-Breakfast!'
'So I did,' said the Leopard. 'I went into other spots as
fast as I could. I went into this spot with you, and a
lot of good it has done me.'
So they went away and lived happily ever afterwards,
Best Beloved. That is all.
'Oh,' said the Ethiopian. 'Baviaan didn't mean spots in
South Africa. he meant spots on your skin.'
Oh, now and then you will hear grown-ups say, 'Can
the Ethiopian change his skin or the Leopard his
spots?' I don't think even grown-ups would keep on
saying such a silly thing if the Leopard and the
19
Ethiopian hadn't done it once -- do you? But they will
never do it again, Best Beloved. They are quite
contented as they are.
altogether if he
had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and
got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a
blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.
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The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter
Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and
their names were-- Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and
Peter.
They lived with their Mother in asand-bank,
underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.
"Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning,
"you may go into the fields or down the lane, but
don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had
an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs.
McGregor."
"Now run along, and don't get into mischief. I am
going out." Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and
her umbrella, and went through the wood to the
baker's. She bought a loaf of brown bread and five
currant buns.
Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were good little
bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries;
But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away
to Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the
gate!
First he ate some lettuces and some French beans;
and then he ate some radishes;
And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for
some parsley.
But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom
should he meet but Mr. McGregor!
Mr. McGregor was on his hands and knees planting
out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after
Peter, waving a rake and calling out, "Stop thief."
Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all
over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to
the gate.
He lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the
other shoe amongst the potatoes.
After losing them, he ran on four legs and went
faster, so that I think he might have got away
Peter gave himself up for lost, and shed big tears; but
his sobs were overheard by some friendly sparrows,
who flew to him in great excitement, and implored
him to exert himself.
Mr. McGregor came up with a sieve, which he
intended to pop upon the top of Peter; but Peter
wriggled out
just in time, leaving his jacket behind him.
And rushed into the toolshed, and jumped into a can.
It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it
had
not had so much water in it.
Mr. McGregor was quite sure that Peter was
somewhere in the toolshed, perhaps hidden
underneath a flowerpot. He began to turn them over carefully, looking
under each.
Presently Peter sneezed-- "Kertyschoo!" Mr.
McGregor was after him in no time,
And tried to put his foot upon Peter, who jumped out
of a window, upsetting three plants. The window
was too small for Mr. McGregor, and he was tired of
running after Peter. He went back to his work.
Peter sat down to rest; he was out of breath and
trembling with fright, and he had not the least idea
which
way to go. Also he was very damp with sitting in that
can.
After a time he began to wander about, going lippity-lippity--not very fast, and looking all around.
He found a door in a wall; but it was locked, and
there was no room for a fat little rabbit to squeeze
underneath.
An old mouse was running in and out over the stone
doorstep, carrying peas and beans to her family in the
wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she
had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not
answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began
to cry.
Then he tried to find his way straight across the
garden, but he became more and more puzzled.
Presently, he came to a pond where Mr. McGregor
20
filled his water-cans. A white cat was staring at some
goldfish; she sat very, very still, but now and then the
tip of her tail twitched as if it were alive. Peter
thought it best to go away without speaking to her; he
has heard about cats from his cousin, little Benjamin
Bunny.
He went back towards the toolshed, but suddenly,
quite close to him, he heard the noise of a hoe--scrr-ritch, scratch, scratch, scritch. Peter scuttered
underneath the bushes. But presently, as nothing
happened, he
came out, and climbed upon a wheelbarrow, and
peeped over. The first thing he saw was Mr.
McGregor
hoeing onions. His back was turned towards Peter,
and beyond him was the gate!
Peter got down very quietly off the wheelbarrow, and
started running as fast as he could go, along a straight
walk behind some black-currant bushes.
Mr. McGregor caught sight of him at the corner, but
Peter did not care. He slipped underneath the gate,
and
was safe at last in the wood outside the garden.
hedges topping an earth wall on each side of the road;
then at the foot of the steep ascent before Ploumar the
horse dropped into a walk, and the driver jumped
down heavily from the box. He flicked his whip and
climbed the incline, stepping clumsily uphill by the
side of the carriage, one hand on the footboard, his
eyes on the ground. After a while he lifted his head,
pointed up the road with the end of the whip, and
said-"The idiot!"
The sun was shining violently upon the undulating
surface of the land. The rises were topped by clumps
of meagre trees, with their branches showing high on
the sky as if they had been perched upon stilts. The
small fields, cut up by hedges and stone walls that
zig-zagged over the slopes, lay in rectangular patches
of vivid greens and yellows, resembling the unskilful
daubs of a naive picture. And the landscape was
divided in two by the white streak of a road
stretching in long loops far away, like a river of dust
crawling out of the hills on its way to the sea.
"Here he is," said the driver, again.
Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till
he got home to the big fir-tree.
In the long grass bordering the road a face glided past
the carriage at the level of the wheels as we drove
slowly by. The imbecile face was red, and the bullet
head with close-cropped hair seemed to lie alone, its
chin in the dust. The body was lost in the bushes
growing thick along the bottom of the deep ditch.
He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice
soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole, and shut his
eyes. His mother was busy cooking; she wondered
what he had done with his clothes. It was the second
little
jacket and pair of shoes that Peter had lost in a
fortnight!
It was a boy's face. He might have been sixteen,
judging from the size--perhaps less, perhaps more.
Such creatures are forgotten by time, and live
untouched by years till death gathers them up into its
compassionate bosom; the faithful death that never
forgets in the press of work the most insignificant of
its children.
I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during
the evening.
"Ah! there's another," said the man, with a certain
satisfaction in his tone, as if he had caught sight of
something expected.
Mr. McGregor hung up the little jacket and the shoes
for a scare-crow to frighten the blackbirds.
His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile
tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter!
"One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time."
But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and
milk and blackberries for supper.
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The Idiots
Joseph Conrad
We were driving along the road from Treguier to
Kervanda. We passed at a smart trot between the
There was another. That one stood nearly in the
middle of the road in the blaze of sunshine at the end
of his own short shadow. And he stood with hands
pushed into the opposite sleeves of his long coat, his
head sunk between the shoulders, all hunched up in
the flood of heat. From a distance he had the aspect
of one suffering from intense cold.
"Those are twins," explained the driver.
The idiot shuffled two paces out of the way and
looked at us over his shoulder when we brushed past
21
him. The glance was unseeing and staring, a
fascinated glance; but he did not turn to look after us.
Probably the image passed before the eyes without
leaving any trace on the misshapen brain of the
creature. When we had topped the ascent I looked
over the hood. He stood in the road just where we
had left him.
The driver clambered into his seat, clicked his
tongue, and we went downhill. The brake squeaked
horribly from time to time. At the foot he eased off
the noisy mechanism and said, turning half round on
his box-"We shall see some more of them by-and-by."
"More idiots? How many of them are there, then?" I
asked.
"There's four of them--children of a farmer near
Ploumar here. . . . The parents are dead now," he
added, after a while. "The grandmother lives on the
farm. In the daytime they knock about on this road,
and they come home at dusk along with the cattle. . . .
It's a good farm."
We saw the other two: a boy and a girl, as the driver
said. They were dressed exactly alike, in shapeless
garments with petticoat-like skirts. The imperfect
thing that lived within them moved those beings to
howl at us from the top of the bank, where they
sprawled amongst the tough stalks of furze. Their
cropped black heads stuck out from the bright yellow
wall of countless small blossoms. The faces were
purple with the strain of yelling; the voices sounded
blank and cracked like a mechanical imitation of old
people's voices; and suddenly ceased when we turned
into a lane.
I saw them many times in my wandering about the
country. They lived on that road, drifting along its
length here and there, according to the inexplicable
impulses of their monstrous darkness. They were an
offence to the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven,
a blight on the concentrated and purposeful vigour of
the wild landscape. In time the story of their parents
shaped itself before me out of the listless answers to
my questions, out of the indifferent words heard in
wayside inns or on the very road those idiots haunted.
Some of it was told by an emaciated and sceptical old
fellow with a tremendous whip, while we trudged
together over the sands by the side of a two-wheeled
cart loaded with dripping seaweed. Then at other
times other people confirmed and completed the
story: till it stood at last before me, a tale formidable
and simple, as they always are, those disclosures of
obscure trials endured by ignorant hearts.
When he returned from his military service JeanPierre Bacadou found the old people very much aged.
He remarked with pain that the work of the farm was
not satisfactorily done. The father had not the energy
of old days. The hands did not feel over them the eye
of the master. Jean-Pierre noted with sorrow that the
heap of manure in the courtyard before the only
entrance to the house was not so large as it should
have been. The fences were out of repair, and the
cattle suffered from neglect. At home the mother was
practically bedridden, and the girls chattered loudly
in the big kitchen, unrebuked, from morning to night.
He said to himself: "We must change all this." He
talked the matter over with his father one evening
when the rays of the setting sun entering the yard
between the outhouses ruled the heavy shadows with
luminous streaks. Over the manure heap floated a
mist, opal-tinted and odorous, and the marauding
hens would stop in their scratching to examine with a
sudden glance of their round eye the two men, both
lean and tall, talking in hoarse tones. The old man, all
twisted with rheumatism and bowed with years of
work, the younger bony and straight, spoke without
gestures in the indifferent manner of peasants, grave
and slow. But before the sun had set the father had
submitted to the sensible arguments of the son. "It is
not for me that I am speaking," insisted Jean-Pierre.
"It is for the land. It's a pity to see it badly used. I am
not impatient for myself." The old fellow nodded
over his stick. "I dare say; I dare say," he muttered.
"You may be right. Do what you like. It's the mother
that will be pleased."
The mother was pleased with her daughter-in-law.
Jean-Pierre brought the two-wheeled spring-cart with
a rush into the yard. The gray horse galloped
clumsily, and the bride and bridegroom, sitting side
by side, were jerked backwards and forwards by the
up and down motion of the shafts, in a manner
regular and brusque. On the road the distanced
wedding guests straggled in pairs and groups. The
men advanced with heavy steps, swinging their idle
arms. They were clad in town clothes; jackets cut
with clumsy smartness, hard black hats, immense
boots, polished highly. Their women all in simple
black, with white caps and shawls of faded tints
folded triangularly on the back, strolled lightly by
their side. In front the violin sang a strident tune, and
the biniou snored and hummed, while the player
capered solemnly, lifting high his heavy clogs. The
sombre procession drifted in and out of the narrow
lanes, through sunshine and through shade, between
fields and hedgerows, scaring the little birds that
darted away in troops right and left. In the yard of
Bacadou's farm the dark ribbon wound itself up into a
mass of men and women pushing at the door with
22
cries and greetings. The wedding dinner was
remembered for months. It was a splendid feast in the
orchard. Farmers of considerable means and excellent
repute were to be found sleeping in ditches, all along
the road to Treguier, even as late as the afternoon of
the next day. All the countryside participated in the
happiness of Jean-Pierre. He remained sober, and,
together with his quiet wife, kept out of the way,
letting father and mother reap their due of honour and
thanks. But the next day he took hold strongly, and
the old folks felt a shadow--precursor of the grave-fall upon them finally. The world is to the young.
When the twins were born there was plenty of room
in the house, for the mother of Jean-Pierre had gone
away to dwell under a heavy stone in the cemetery of
Ploumar. On that day, for the first time since his son's
marriage, the elder Bacadou, neglected by the
cackling lot of strange women who thronged the
kitchen, left in the morning his seat under the mantel
of the fireplace, and went into the empty cow-house,
shaking his white locks dismally. Grandsons were all
very well, but he wanted his soup at midday. When
shown the babies, he stared at them with a fixed gaze,
and muttered something like: "It's too much."
Whether he meant too much happiness, or simply
commented upon the number of his descendants, it is
impossible to say. He looked offended --as far as his
old wooden face could express anything; and for days
afterwards could be seen, almost any time of the day,
sitting at the gate, with his nose over his knees, a pipe
between his gums, and gathered up into a kind of
raging concentrated sulkiness. Once he spoke to his
son, alluding to the newcomers with a groan: "They
will quarrel over the land." "Don't bother about that,
father," answered Jean-Pierre, stolidly, and passed,
bent double, towing a recalcitrant cow over his
shoulder.
He was happy, and so was Susan, his wife. It was not
an ethereal joy welcoming new souls to struggle,
perchance to victory. In fourteen years both boys
would be a help; and, later on, Jean-Pierre pictured
two big sons striding over the land from patch to
patch, wringing tribute from the earth beloved and
fruitful. Susan was happy too, for she did not want to
be spoken of as the unfortunate woman, and now she
had children no one could call her that. Both herself
and her husband had seen something of the larger
world--he during the time of his service; while she
had spent a year or so in Paris with a Breton family;
but had been too home-sick to remain longer away
from the hilly and green country, set in a barren circle
of rocks and sands, where she had been born. She
thought that one of the boys ought perhaps to be a
priest, but said nothing to her husband, who was a
republican, and hated the "crows," as he called the
ministers of religion. The christening was a splendid
affair. All the commune came to it, for the Bacadous
were rich and influential, and, now and then, did not
mind the expense. The grandfather had a new coat.
Some months afterwards, one evening when the
kitchen had been swept, and the door locked, JeanPierre, looking at the cot, asked his wife: "What's the
matter with those children?" And, as if these words,
spoken calmly, had been the portent of misfortune,
she answered with a loud wail that must have been
heard across the yard in the pig-sty; for the pigs (the
Bacadous had the finest pigs in the country) stirred
and grunted complainingly in the night. The husband
went on grinding his bread and butter slowly, gazing
at the wall, the soup-plate smoking under his chin. He
had returned late from the market, where he had
overheard (not for the first time) whispers behind his
back. He revolved the words in his mind as he drove
back. "Simple! Both of them. . . . Never any use! . . .
Well! May be, may be. One must see. Would ask his
wife." This was her answer. He felt like a blow on his
chest, but said only: "Go, draw me some cider. I am
thirsty!"
She went out moaning, an empty jug in her hand.
Then he arose, took up the light, and moved slowly
towards the cradle. They slept. He looked at them
sideways, finished his mouthful there, went back
heavily, and sat down before his plate. When his wife
returned he never looked up, but swallowed a couple
of spoonfuls noisily, and remarked, in a dull manner"When they sleep they are like other people's
children."
She sat down suddenly on a stool near by, and shook
with a silent tempest of sobs, unable to speak. He
finished his meal, and remained idly thrown back in
his chair, his eyes lost amongst the black rafters of
the ceiling. Before him the tallow candle flared red
and straight, sending up a slender thread of smoke.
The light lay on the rough, sunburnt skin of his
throat; the sunk cheeks were like patches of darkness,
and his aspect was mournfully stolid, as if he had
ruminated with difficulty endless ideas. Then he said,
deliberately-"We must see . . . consult people. Don't cry. . . . They
won't all be like that . . . surely! We must sleep now."
After the third child, also a boy, was born, JeanPierre went about his work with tense hopefulness.
His lips seemed more narrow, more tightly
compressed than before; as if for fear of letting the
earth he tilled hear the voice of hope that murmured
23
within his breast. He watched the child, stepping up
to the cot with a heavy clang of sabots on the stone
floor, and glanced in, along his shoulder, with that
indifference which is like a deformity of peasant
humanity. Like the earth they master and serve, those
men, slow of eye and speech, do not show the inner
fire; so that, at last, it becomes a question with them
as with the earth, what there is in the core: heat,
violence, a force mysterious and terrible--or nothing
but a clod, a mass fertile and inert, cold and
unfeeling, ready to bear a crop of plants that sustain
life or give death.
The mother watched with other eyes; listened with
otherwise expectant ears. Under the high hanging
shelves supporting great sides of bacon overhead, her
body was busy by the great fireplace, attentive to the
pot swinging on iron gallows, scrubbing the long
table where the field hands would sit down directly to
their evening meal. Her mind remained by the cradle,
night and day on the watch, to hope and suffer. That
child, like the other two, never smiled, never
stretched its hands to her, never spoke; never had a
glance of recognition for her in its big black eyes,
which could only stare fixedly at any glitter, but
failed hopelessly to follow the brilliance of a sun-ray
slipping slowly along the floor. When the men were
at work she spent long days between her three idiot
children and the childish grandfather, who sat grim,
angular, and immovable, with his feet near the warm
ashes of the fire. The feeble old fellow seemed to
suspect that there was something wrong with his
grandsons. Only once, moved either by affection or
by the sense of proprieties, he attempted to nurse the
youngest. He took the boy up from the floor, clicked
his tongue at him, and essayed a shaky gallop of his
bony knees. Then he looked closely with his misty
eyes at the child's face and deposited him down
gently on the floor again. And he sat, his lean shanks
crossed, nodding at the steam escaping from the
cooking-pot with a gaze senile and worried.
Then mute affliction dwelt in Bacadou's farmhouse,
sharing the breath and the bread of its inhabitants;
and the priest of the Ploumar parish had great cause
for congratulation. He called upon the rich
landowner, the Marquis de Chavanes, on purpose to
deliver himself with joyful unction of solemn
platitudes about the inscrutable ways of Providence.
In the vast dimness of the curtained drawing-room,
the little man, resembling a black bolster, leaned
towards a couch, his hat on his knees, and
gesticulated with a fat hand at the elongated,
gracefully-flowing lines of the clear Parisian toilette
from which the half-amused, half-bored marquise
listened with gracious languor. He was exulting and
humble, proud and awed. The impossible had come
to pass. Jean-Pierre Bacadou, the enraged republican
farmer, had been to mass last Sunday--had proposed
to entertain the visiting priests at the next festival of
Ploumar! It was a triumph for the Church and for the
good cause. "I thought I would come at once to tell
Monsieur le Marquis. I know how anxious he is for
the welfare of our country," declared the priest,
wiping his face. He was asked to stay to dinner.
The Chavanes returning that evening, after seeing
their guest to the main gate of the park, discussed the
matter while they strolled in the moonlight, trailing
their long shadows up the straight avenue of
chestnuts. The marquise, a royalist of course, had
been mayor of the commune which includes
Ploumar, the scattered hamlets of the coast, and the
stony islands that fringe the yellow flatness of the
sands. He had felt his position insecure, for there was
a strong republican element in that part of the
country; but now the conversion of Jean-Pierre made
him safe. He was very pleased. "You have no idea
how influential those people are," he explained to his
wife. "Now, I am sure, the next communal election
will go all right. I shall be re- elected." "Your
ambition is perfectly insatiable, Charles," exclaimed
the marquise, gaily. "But, ma chere amie," argued the
husband, seriously, "it's most important that the right
man should be mayor this year, because of the
elections to the Chamber. If you think it amuses me .
. ."
Jean-Pierre had surrendered to his wife's mother.
Madame Levaille was a woman of business, known
and respected within a radius of at least fifteen miles.
Thick-set and stout, she was seen about the country,
on foot or in an acquaintance's cart, perpetually
moving, in spite of her fifty-eight years, in steady
pursuit of business. She had houses in all the hamlets,
she worked quarries of granite, she freighted coasters
with stone--even traded with the Channel Islands.
She was broad-cheeked, wide-eyed, persuasive in
speech: carrying her point with the placid and
invincible obstinacy of an old woman who knows her
own mind. She very seldom slept for two nights
together in the same house; and the wayside inns
were the best places to inquire in as to her
whereabouts. She had either passed, or was expected
to pass there at six; or somebody, coming in, had
seen her in the morning, or expected to meet her that
evening. After the inns that command the roads, the
churches were the buildings she frequented most.
Men of liberal opinions would induce small children
to run into sacred edifices to see whether Madame
Levaille was there, and to tell her that so-and-so was
in the road waiting to speak to her about potatoes, or
24
flour, or stones, or houses; and she would curtail her
devotions, come out blinking and crossing herself
into the sunshine; ready to discuss business matters in
a calm, sensible way across a table in the kitchen of
the inn opposite. Latterly she had stayed for a few
days several times with her son-in-law, arguing
against sorrow and misfortune with composed face
and gentle tones. Jean-Pierre felt the convictions
imbibed in the regiment torn out of his breast--not by
arguments but by facts. Striding over his fields he
thought it over. There were three of them. Three! All
alike! Why? Such things did not happen to
everybody--to nobody he ever heard of. One--might
pass. But three! All three. Forever useless, to be fed
while he lived and . . . What would become of the
land when he died? This must be seen to. He would
sacrifice his convictions. One day he told his wife-"See what your God will do for us. Pay for some
masses."
Susan embraced her man. He stood unbending, then
turned on his heels and went out. But afterwards,
when a black soutane darkened his doorway, he did
not object; even offered some cider himself to the
priest. He listened to the talk meekly; went to mass
between the two women; accomplished what the
priest called "his religious duties" at Easter. That
morning he felt like a man who had sold his soul. In
the afternoon he fought ferociously with an old friend
and neighbour who had remarked that the priests had
the best of it and were now going to eat the priesteater. He came home dishevelled and bleeding, and
happening to catch sight of his children (they were
kept generally out of the way), cursed and swore
incoherently, banging the table. Susan wept. Madame
Levaille sat serenely unmoved. She assured her
daughter that "It will pass;" and taking up her thick
umbrella, departed in haste to see after a schooner
she was going to load with granite from her quarry.
A year or so afterwards the girl was born. A girl.
Jean-Pierre heard of it in the fields, and was so upset
by the news that he sat down on the boundary wall
and remained there till the evening, instead of going
home as he was urged to do. A girl! He felt half
cheated. However, when he got home he was partly
reconciled to his fate. One could marry her to a good
fellow--not to a good for nothing, but to a fellow with
some understanding and a good pair of arms.
Besides, the next may be a boy, he thought. Of course
they would be all right. His new credulity knew of no
doubt. The ill luck was broken. He spoke cheerily to
his wife. She was also hopeful. Three priests came to
that christening, and Madame Levaille was
godmother. The child turned out an idiot too.
Then on market days Jean-Pierre was seen bargaining
bitterly, quarrelsome and greedy; then getting drunk
with taciturn earnestness; then driving home in the
dusk at a rate fit for a wedding, but with a face
gloomy enough for a funeral. Sometimes he would
insist on his wife coming with him; and they would
drive in the early morning, shaking side by side on
the narrow seat above the helpless pig, that, with tied
legs, grunted a melancholy sigh at every rut. The
morning drives were silent; but in the evening,
coming home, Jean-Pierre, tipsy, was viciously
muttering, and growled at the confounded woman
who could not rear children that were like anybody
else's. Susan, holding on against the erratic swayings
of the cart, pretended not to hear. Once, as they were
driving through Ploumar, some obscure and drunken
impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite the
church. The moon swam amongst light white clouds.
The tombstones gleamed pale under the fretted
shadows of the trees in the churchyard. Even the
village dogs slept. Only the nightingales, awake, spun
out the thrill of their song above the silence of graves.
Jean-Pierre said thickly to his wife-"What do you think is there?"
He pointed his whip at the tower--in which the big
dial of the clock appeared high in the moonlight like
a pallid face without eyes--and getting out carefully,
fell down at once by the wheel. He picked himself up
and climbed one by one the few steps to the iron gate
of the churchyard. He put his face to the bars and
called out indistinctly-"Hey there! Come out!"
"Jean! Return! Return!" entreated his wife in low
tones.
He took no notice, and seemed to wait there. The
song of nightingales beat on all sides against the high
walls of the church, and flowed back between stone
crosses and flat gray slabs, engraved with words of
hope and sorrow.
"Hey! Come out!" shouted Jean-Pierre, loudly.
The nightingales ceased to sing.
"Nobody?" went on Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A
swindle of the crows. That's what this is. Nobody
anywhere. I despise it. Allez! Houp!"
He shook the gate with all his strength, and the iron
bars rattled with a frightful clanging, like a chain
dragged over stone steps. A dog near by barked
hurriedly. Jean-Pierre staggered back, and after three
25
successive dashes got into his cart. Susan sat very
quiet and still. He said to her with drunken severity-"See? Nobody. I've been made a fool! Malheur!
Somebody will pay for it. The next one I see near the
house I will lay my whip on . . . on the black spine . .
. I will. I don't want him in there . . . he only helps the
carrion crows to rob poor folk. I am a man. . . . We
will see if I can't have children like anybody else . . .
now you mind. . . . They won't be all . . . all . . . we
see. . . ."
She burst out through the fingers that hid her face-"Don't say that, Jean; don't say that, my man!"
He struck her a swinging blow on the head with the
back of his hand and knocked her into the bottom of
the cart, where she crouched, thrown about
lamentably by every jolt. He drove furiously,
standing up, brandishing his whip, shaking the reins
over the gray horse that galloped ponderously,
making the heavy harness leap upon his broad
quarters. The country rang clamorous in the night
with the irritated barking of farm dogs, that followed
the rattle of wheels all along the road. A couple of
belated wayfarers had only just time to step into the
ditch. At his own gate he caught the post and was
shot out of the cart head first. The horse went on
slowly to the door. At Susan's piercing cries the farm
hands rushed out. She thought him dead, but he was
only sleeping where he fell, and cursed his men, who
hastened to him, for disturbing his slumbers.
Autumn came. The clouded sky descended low upon
the black contours of the hills; and the dead leaves
danced in spiral whirls under naked trees, till the
wind, sighing profoundly, laid them to rest in the
hollows of bare valleys. And from morning till night
one could see all over the land black denuded
boughs, the boughs gnarled and twisted, as if
contorted with pain, swaying sadly between the wet
clouds and the soaked earth. The clear and gentle
streams of summer days rushed discoloured and
raging at the stones that barred the way to the sea,
with the fury of madness bent upon suicide. From
horizon to horizon the great road to the sands lay
between the hills in a dull glitter of empty curves,
resembling an unnavigable river of mud.
Jean-Pierre went from field to field, moving blurred
and tall in the drizzle, or striding on the crests of
rises, lonely and high upon the gray curtain of
drifting clouds, as if he had been pacing along the
very edge of the universe. He looked at the black
earth, at the earth mute and promising, at the
mysterious earth doing its work of life in death-like
stillness under the veiled sorrow of the sky. And it
seemed to him that to a man worse than childless
there was no promise in the fertility of fields, that
from him the earth escaped, defied him, frowned at
him like the clouds, sombre and hurried above his
head. Having to face alone his own fields, he felt the
inferiority of man who passes away before the clod
that remains. Must he give up the hope of having by
his side a son who would look at the turned-up sods
with a master's eye? A man that would think as he
thought, that would feel as he felt; a man who would
be part of himself, and yet remain to trample
masterfully on that earth when he was gone? He
thought of some distant relations, and felt savage
enough to curse them aloud. They! Never! He turned
homewards, going straight at the roof of his dwelling,
visible between the enlaced skeletons of trees. As he
swung his legs over the stile a cawing flock of birds
settled slowly on the field; dropped down behind his
back, noiseless and fluttering, like flakes of soot.
That day Madame Levaille had gone early in the
afternoon to the house she had near Kervanion. She
had to pay some of the men who worked in her
granite quarry there, and she went in good time
because her little house contained a shop where the
workmen could spend their wages without the trouble
of going to town. The house stood alone amongst
rocks. A lane of mud and stones ended at the door.
The sea-winds coming ashore on Stonecutter's point,
fresh from the fierce turmoil of the waves, howled
violently at the unmoved heaps of black boulders
holding up steadily short-armed, high crosses against
the tremendous rush of the invisible. In the sweep of
gales the sheltered dwelling stood in a calm resonant
and disquieting, like the calm in the centre of a
hurricane. On stormy nights, when the tide was out,
the bay of Fougere, fifty feet below the house,
resembled an immense black pit, from which
ascended mutterings and sighs as if the sands down
there had been alive and complaining. At high tide
the returning water assaulted the ledges of rock in
short rushes, ending in bursts of livid light and
columns of spray, that flew inland, stinging to death
the grass of pastures.
The darkness came from the hills, flowed over the
coast, put out the red fires of sunset, and went on to
seaward pursuing the retiring tide. The wind dropped
with the sun, leaving a maddened sea and a
devastated sky. The heavens above the house seemed
to be draped in black rags, held up here and there by
pins of fire. Madame Levaille, for this evening the
servant of her own workmen, tried to induce them to
depart. "An old woman like me ought to be in bed at
this late hour," she good-humouredly repeated. The
26
quarrymen drank, asked for more. They shouted over
the table as if they had been talking across a field. At
one end four of them played cards, banging the wood
with their hard knuckles, and swearing at every lead.
One sat with a lost gaze, humming a bar of some
song, which he repeated endlessly. Two others, in a
corner, were quarrelling confidentially and fiercely
over some woman, looking close into one another's
eyes as if they had wanted to tear them out, but
speaking in whispers that promised violence and
murder discreetly, in a venomous sibillation of
subdued words. The atmosphere in there was thick
enough to slice with a knife. Three candles burning
about the long room glowed red and dull like sparks
expiring in ashes.
The slight click of the iron latch was at that late hour
as unexpected and startling as a thunder-clap.
Madame Levaille put down a bottle she held above a
liqueur glass; the players turned their heads; the
whispered quarrel ceased; only the singer, after
darting a glance at the door, went on humming with a
stolid face. Susan appeared in the doorway, stepped
in, flung the door to, and put her back against it,
saying, half aloud-"Mother!"
Madame Levaille, taking up the bottle again, said
calmly: "Here you are, my girl. What a state you are
in!" The neck of the bottle rang on the rim of the
glass, for the old woman was startled, and the idea
that the farm had caught fire had entered her head.
She could think of no other cause for her daughter's
appearance.
Susan, soaked and muddy, stared the whole length of
the room towards the men at the far end. Her mother
asked-"What has happened? God guard us from
misfortune!"
Susan moved her lips. No sound came. Madame
Levaille stepped up to her daughter, took her by the
arm, looked into her face.
"In God's name," she said, shakily, "what's the
matter? You have been rolling in mud. . . . Why did
you come? . . . Where's Jean?"
The men had all got up and approached slowly,
staring with dull surprise. Madame Levaille jerked
her daughter away from the door, swung her round
upon a seat close to the wall. Then she turned fiercely
to the men--
"Enough of this! Out you go--you others! I close."
One of them observed, looking down at Susan
collapsed on the seat: "She is--one may say--half
dead."
Madame Levaille flung the door open.
"Get out! March!" she cried, shaking nervously.
They dropped out into the night, laughing stupidly.
Outside, the two Lotharios broke out into loud
shouts. The others tried to soothe them, all talking at
once. The noise went away up the lane with the men,
who staggered together in a tight knot, remonstrating
with one another foolishly.
"Speak, Susan. What is it? Speak!" entreated
Madame Levaille, as soon as the door was shut.
Susan pronounced some incomprehensible words,
glaring at the table. The old woman clapped her
hands above her head, let them drop, and stood
looking at her daughter with disconsolate eyes. Her
husband had been "deranged in his head" for a few
years before he died, and now she began to suspect
her daughter was going mad. She asked, pressingly-"Does Jean know where you are? Where is Jean?"
"He knows . . . he is dead."
"What!" cried the old woman. She came up near, and
peering at her daughter, repeated three times: "What
do you say? What do you say? What do you say?"
Susan sat dry-eyed and stony before Madame
Levaille, who contemplated her, feeling a strange
sense of inexplicable horror creep into the silence of
the house. She had hardly realised the news, further
than to understand that she had been brought in one
short moment face to face with something
unexpected and final. It did not even occur to her to
ask for any explanation. She thought: accident-terrible accident--blood to the head--fell down a trap
door in the loft. . . . She remained there, distracted
and mute, blinking her old eyes.
Suddenly, Susan said-"I have killed him."
For a moment the mother stood still, almost
unbreathing, but with composed face. The next
second she burst out into a shout-"You miserable madwoman . . . they will cut your
neck. . . ."
27
She fancied the gendarmes entering the house, saying
to her: "We want your daughter; give her up:" the
gendarmes with the severe, hard faces of men on
duty. She knew the brigadier well--an old friend,
familiar and respectful, saying heartily, "To your
good health, Madame!" before lifting to his lips the
small glass of cognac--out of the special bottle she
kept for friends. And now! . . . She was losing her
head. She rushed here and there, as if looking for
something urgently needed--gave that up, stood stock
still in the middle of the room, and screamed at her
daughter--
amongst the wrinkles at the corners of her steady old
eyes. She stammered-"You wicked woman--you disgrace me. But there!
You always resembled your father. What do you
think will become of you . . . in the other world? In
this . . . Oh misery!"
"Why? Say! Say! Why?"
She was very hot now. She felt burning inside. She
wrung her perspiring hands--and suddenly, starting in
great haste, began to look for her big shawl and
umbrella, feverishly, never once glancing at her
daughter, who stood in the middle of the room
following her with a gaze distracted and cold.
The other seemed to leap out of her strange apathy.
"Nothing worse than in this," said Susan.
"Do you think I am made of stone?" she shouted
back, striding towards her mother.
Her mother, umbrella in hand and trailing the shawl
over the floor, groaned profoundly.
"No! It's impossible. . . ." said Madame Levaille, in a
convinced tone.
"I must go to the priest," she burst out passionately.
"I do not know whether you even speak the truth!
You are a horrible woman. They will find you
anywhere. You may stay here--or go. There is no
room for you in this world."
"You go and see, mother," retorted Susan, looking at
her with blazing eyes. "There's no money in heaven-no justice. No! . . . I did not know. . . . Do you think I
have no heart? Do you think I have never heard
people jeering at me, pitying me, wondering at me?
Do you know how some of them were calling me?
The mother of idiots--that was my nickname! And
my children never would know me, never speak to
me. They would know nothing; neither men--nor
God. Haven't I prayed! But the Mother of God herself
would not hear me. A mother! . . . Who is accursed-I, or the man who is dead? Eh? Tell me. I took care of
myself. Do you think I would defy the anger of God
and have my house full of those things--that are
worse than animals who know the hand that feeds
them? Who blasphemed in the night at the very
church door? Was it I? . . . I only wept and prayed for
mercy . . . and I feel the curse at every moment of the
day--I see it round me from morning to night . . . I've
got to keep them alive--to take care of my misfortune
and shame. And he would come. I begged him and
Heaven for mercy. . . . No! . . . Then we shall see. . . .
He came this evening. I thought to myself: 'Ah!
again!' . . . I had my long scissors. I heard him
shouting . . . I saw him near. . . . I must--must I? . . .
Then take! . . . And I struck him in the throat above
the breastbone. . . . I never heard him even sigh. . . . I
left him standing. . . . It was a minute ago. How did I
come here?"
Madame Levaille shivered. A wave of cold ran down
her back, down her fat arms under her tight sleeves,
made her stamp gently where she stood. Quivers ran
over the broad cheeks, across the thin lips, ran
Ready now to depart, she yet wandered aimlessly
about the room, putting the bottles on the shelf, trying
to fit with trembling hands the covers on cardboard
boxes. Whenever the real sense of what she had
heard emerged for a second from the haze of her
thoughts she would fancy that something had
exploded in her brain without, unfortunately, bursting
her head to pieces--which would have been a relief.
She blew the candles out one by one without
knowing it, and was horribly startled by the darkness.
She fell on a bench and began to whimper. After a
while she ceased, and sat listening to the breathing of
her daughter, whom she could hardly see, still and
upright, giving no other sign of life. She was
becoming old rapidly at last, during those minutes.
She spoke in tones unsteady, cut about by the rattle of
teeth, like one shaken by a deadly cold fit of ague.
"I wish you had died little. I will never dare to show
my old head in the sunshine again. There are worse
misfortunes than idiot children. I wish you had been
born to me simple--like your own. . . ."
She saw the figure of her daughter pass before the
faint and livid clearness of a window. Then it
appeared in the doorway for a second, and the door
swung to with a clang. Madame Levaille, as if
awakened by the noise from a long nightmare, rushed
out.
"Susan!" she shouted from the doorstep.
28
She heard a stone roll a long time down the declivity
of the rocky beach above the sands. She stepped
forward cautiously, one hand on the wall of the
house, and peered down into the smooth darkness of
the empty bay. Once again she cried-"Susan! You will kill yourself there."
The stone had taken its last leap in the dark, and she
heard nothing now. A sudden thought seemed to
strangle her, and she called no more. She turned her
back upon the black silence of the pit and went up the
lane towards Ploumar, stumbling along with sombre
determination, as if she had started on a desperate
journey that would last, perhaps, to the end of her
life. A sullen and periodic clamour of waves rolling
over reefs followed her far inland between the high
hedges sheltering the gloomy solitude of the fields.
Susan had run out, swerving sharp to the left at the
door, and on the edge of the slope crouched down
behind a boulder. A dislodged stone went on
downwards, rattling as it leaped. When Madame
Levaille called out, Susan could have, by stretching
her hand, touched her mother's skirt, had she had the
courage to move a limb. She saw the old woman go
away, and she remained still, closing her eyes and
pressing her side to the hard and rugged surface of
the rock. After a while a familiar face with fixed eyes
and an open mouth became visible in the intense
obscurity amongst the boulders. She uttered a low cry
and stood up. The face vanished, leaving her to gasp
and shiver alone in the wilderness of stone heaps. But
as soon as she had crouched down again to rest, with
her head against the rock, the face returned, came
very near, appeared eager to finish the speech that
had been cut short by death, only a moment ago. She
scrambled quickly to her feet and said: "Go away, or
I will do it again." The thing wavered, swung to the
right, to the left. She moved this way and that,
stepped back, fancied herself screaming at it, and was
appalled by the unbroken stillness of the night. She
tottered on the brink, felt the steep declivity under her
feet, and rushed down blindly to save herself from a
headlong fall. The shingle seemed to wake up; the
pebbles began to roll before her, pursued her from
above, raced down with her on both sides, rolling
past with an increasing clatter. In the peace of the
night the noise grew, deepening to a rumour,
continuous and violent, as if the whole semicircle of
the stony beach had started to tumble down into the
bay. Susan's feet hardly touched the slope that
seemed to run down with her. At the bottom she
stumbled, shot forward, throwing her arms out, and
fell heavily. She jumped up at once and turned
swiftly to look back, her clenched hands full of sand
she had clutched in her fall. The face was there,
keeping its distance, visible in its own sheen that
made a pale stain in the night. She shouted, "Go
away!"--she shouted at it with pain, with fear, with all
the rage of that useless stab that could not keep him
quiet, keep him out of her sight. What did he want
now? He was dead. Dead men have no children.
Would he never leave her alone? She shrieked at it-waved her outstretched hands. She seemed to feel the
breath of parted lips, and, with a long cry of
discouragement, fled across the level bottom of the
bay.
She ran lightly, unaware of any effort of her body.
High sharp rocks that, when the bay is full, show
above the glittering plain of blue water like pointed
towers of submerged churches, glided past her,
rushing to the land at a tremendous pace. To the left,
in the distance, she could see something shining: a
broad disc of light in which narrow shadows pivoted
round the centre like the spokes of a wheel. She heard
a voice calling, "Hey! There!" and answered with a
wild scream. So, he could call yet! He was calling
after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through the
night, past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers
who stood round their lantern paralysed with fear at
the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing
shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring
fearfully. A woman fell on her knees, and, crossing
herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her
ragged skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob
despairingly, lugging her soaked burden close to the
man who carried the light. Somebody said: "The
thing ran out towards the sea." Another voice
exclaimed: "And the sea is coming back! Look at the
spreading puddles. Do you hear--you woman--there!
Get up!" Several voices cried together. "Yes, let us be
off! Let the accursed thing go to the sea!" They
moved on, keeping close round the light. Suddenly a
man swore loudly. He would go and see what was the
matter. It had been a woman's voice. He would go.
There were shrill protests from women--but his high
form detached itself from the group and went off
running. They sent an unanimous call of scared
voices after him. A word, insulting and mocking,
came back, thrown at them through the darkness. A
woman moaned. An old man said gravely: "Such
things ought to be left alone." They went on slower,
shuffling in the yielding sand and whispering to one
another that Millot feared nothing, having no
religion, but that it would end badly some day.
Susan met the incoming tide by the Raven islet and
stopped, panting, with her feet in the water. She
heard the murmur and felt the cold caress of the sea,
and, calmer now, could see the sombre and confused
29
mass of the Raven on one side and on the other the
long white streak of Molene sands that are left high
above the dry bottom of Fougere Bay at every ebb.
She turned round and saw far away, along the starred
background of the sky, the ragged outline of the
coast. Above it, nearly facing her, appeared the tower
of Ploumar Church; a slender and tall pyramid
shooting up dark and pointed into the clustered glitter
of the stars. She felt strangely calm. She knew where
she was, and began to remember how she came there-and why. She peered into the smooth obscurity near
her. She was alone. There was nothing there; nothing
near her, either living or dead.
The tide was creeping in quietly, putting out long
impatient arms of strange rivulets that ran towards
the land between ridges of sand. Under the night the
pools grew bigger with mysterious rapidity, while the
great sea, yet far off, thundered in a regular rhythm
along the indistinct line of the horizon. Susan
splashed her way back for a few yards without being
able to get clear of the water that murmured tenderly
all around and, suddenly, with a spiteful gurgle,
nearly took her off her feet. Her heart thumped with
fear. This place was too big and too empty to die in.
To-morrow they would do with her what they liked.
But before she died she must tell them--tell the
gentlemen in black clothes that there are things no
woman can bear. She must explain how it happened. .
. . She splashed through a pool, getting wet to the
waist, too preoccupied to care. . . . She must explain.
"He came in the same way as ever and said, just so:
'Do you think I am going to leave the land to those
people from Morbihan that I do not know? Do you?
We shall see! Come along, you creature of
mischance!' And he put his arms out. Then,
Messieurs, I said: 'Before God--never!' And he said,
striding at me with open palms: 'There is no God to
hold me! Do you understand, you useless carcase. I
will do what I like.' And he took me by the shoulders.
Then I, Messieurs, called to God for help, and next
minute, while he was shaking me, I felt my long
scissors in my hand. His shirt was unbuttoned, and,
by the candle- light, I saw the hollow of his throat. I
cried: 'Let go!' He was crushing my shoulders. He
was strong, my man was! Then I thought: No! . . .
Must I? . . . Then take!--and I struck in the hollow
place. I never saw him fall. . . . The old father never
turned his head. He is deaf and childish, gentlemen. .
. . Nobody saw him fall. I ran out . . . Nobody saw. . .
."
She had been scrambling amongst the boulders of the
Raven and now found herself, all out of breath,
standing amongst the heavy shadows of the rocky
islet. The Raven is connected with the main land by a
natural pier of immense and slippery stones. She
intended to return home that way. Was he still
standing there? At home. Home! Four idiots and a
corpse. She must go back and explain. Anybody
would understand. . . .
Below her the night or the sea seemed to pronounce
distinctly-"Aha! I see you at last!"
She started, slipped, fell; and without attempting to
rise, listened, terrified. She heard heavy breathing, a
clatter of wooden clogs. It stopped.
"Where the devil did you pass?" said an invisible
man, hoarsely.
She held her breath. She recognized the voice. She
had not seen him fall. Was he pursuing her there
dead, or perhaps . . . alive?
She lost her head. She cried from the crevice where
she lay huddled, "Never, never!"
"Ah! You are still there. You led me a fine dance.
Wait, my beauty, I must see how you look after all
this. You wait. . . ."
Millot was stumbling, laughing, swearing
meaninglessly out of pure satisfaction, pleased with
himself for having run down that fly-by-night. "As if
there were such things as ghosts! Bah! It took an old
African soldier to show those clodhoppers. . . . But it
was curious. Who the devil was she?"
Susan listened, crouching. He was coming for her,
this dead man. There was no escape. What a noise he
made amongst the stones. . . . She saw his head rise
up, then the shoulders. He was tall--her own man!
His long arms waved about, and it was his own voice
sounding a little strange . . . because of the scissors.
She scrambled out quickly, rushed to the edge of the
causeway, and turned round. The man stood still on a
high stone, detaching himself in dead black on the
glitter of the sky.
"Where are you going to?" he called, roughly.
She answered, "Home!" and watched him intensely.
He made a striding, clumsy leap on to another
boulder, and stopped again, balancing himself, then
said-"Ha! ha! Well, I am going with you. It's the least I
can do. Ha! ha! ha!"
30
She stared at him till her eyes seemed to become
glowing coals that burned deep into her brain, and yet
she was in mortal fear of making out the well-known
features. Below her the sea lapped softly against the
rock with a splash continuous and gentle.
The man said, advancing another step-"I am coming for you. What do you think?"
She trembled. Coming for her! There was no escape,
no peace, no hope. She looked round despairingly.
Suddenly the whole shadowy coast, the blurred islets,
the heaven itself, swayed about twice, then came to a
rest. She closed her eyes and shouted-"Can't you wait till I am dead!"
She was shaken by a furious hate for that shade that
pursued her in this world, unappeased even by death
in its longing for an heir that would be like other
people's children.
"Hey! What?" said Millot, keeping his distance
prudently. He was saying to himself: "Look out!
Some lunatic. An accident happens soon."
men were carrying inland Susan's body on a handbarrow, while several others straggled listlessly
behind. Madame Levaille looked after the procession.
"Yes, Monsieur le Marquis," she said dispassionately,
in her usual calm tone of a reasonable old woman.
"There are unfortunate people on this earth. I had
only one child. Only one! And they won't bury her in
consecrated ground!"
Her eyes filled suddenly, and a short shower of tears
rolled down the broad cheeks. She pulled the shawl
close about her. The Marquis leaned slightly over in
his saddle, and said-"It is very sad. You have all my sympathy. I shall
speak to the Cure. She was unquestionably insane,
and the fall was accidental. Millot says so distinctly.
Good-day, Madame."
And he trotted off, thinking to himself: "I must get
this old woman appointed guardian of those idiots,
and administrator of the farm. It would be much
better than having here one of those other Bacadous,
probably a red republican, corrupting my commune."
_______________________________________
She went on, wildly--
The Body Snatcher
"I want to live. To live alone--for a week--for a day. I
must explain to them. . . . I would tear you to pieces,
I would kill you twenty times over rather than let you
touch me while I live. How many times must I kill
you--you blasphemer! Satan sends you here. I am
damned too!"
Every night in the year, four of us sat in the small
parlour of the George at Debenham — the
undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself.
Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow
low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be
each planted in his own particular arm–chair. Fettes
was an old drunken Scotchman, a man of education
obviously, and a man of some property, since he
lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years
ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of
living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His
blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the
church–spire. His place in the parlour at the George,
his absence from church, his old, crapulous,
disreputable vices, were all things of course in
Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and
some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and
again set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps
upon the table. He drank rum – five glasses regularly
every evening; and for the greater portion of his
nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his
right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic
saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was
supposed to have some special knowledge of
medicine, and had been known, upon a pinch, to set a
fracture or reduce a dislocation; but beyond these
slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his
character and antecedents.
"Come," said Millot, alarmed and conciliating. "I am
perfectly alive! . . . Oh, my God!"
She had screamed, "Alive!" and at once vanished
before his eyes, as if the islet itself had swerved aside
from under her feet. Millot rushed forward, and fell
flat with his chin over the edge. Far below he saw the
water whitened by her struggles, and heard one shrill
cry for help that seemed to dart upwards along the
perpendicular face of the rock, and soar past, straight
into the high and impassive heaven.
Madame Levaille sat, dry-eyed, on the short grass of
the hill side, with her thick legs stretched out, and her
old feet turned up in their black cloth shoes. Her
clogs stood near by, and further off the umbrella lay
on the withered sward like a weapon dropped from
the grasp of a vanquished warrior. The Marquis of
Chavanes, on horseback, one gloved hand on thigh,
looked down at her as she got up laboriously, with
groans. On the narrow track of the seaweed-carts four
Robert Louis Stevenson
31
One dark winter night — it had struck nine some
time before the landlord joined us — there was a sick
man in the George, a great neighbouring proprietor
suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to
Parliament; and the great man’s still greater London
doctor had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the
first time that such a thing had happened in
Debenham, for the railway was but newly open, and
we were all proportionately moved by the
occurrence.
me speak. You would think I was some good, old,
decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I
never canted. Voltaire might have canted if he’d
stood in my shoes; but the brains’ — with a rattling
fillip on his bald head — ‘the brains were clear and
active, and I saw and made no deductions.’
‘He’s come,’ said the landlord, after he had filled and
lighted his pipe.
Fettes paid no regard to me.
‘He?’ said I. ‘Who? — not the doctor?’
‘Himself,’ replied our host.
‘What is his name?’
‘Doctor Macfarlane,’ said the landlord.
Fettes was far through his third tumbler, stupidly
fuddled, now nodding over, now staring mazily
around him; but at the last word he seemed to
awaken, and repeated the name ‘Macfarlane’ twice,
quietly enough the first time, but with sudden
emotion at the second.
‘Yes,’ said the landlord, ‘that’s his name, Doctor
Wolfe Macfarlane.’
Fettes became instantly sober; his eyes awoke, his
voice became clear, loud, and steady, his language
forcible and earnest. We were all startled by the
transformation, as if a man had risen from the dead.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘I am afraid I have not
been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this
Wolfe Macfarlane?’ And then, when he had heard the
landlord out, ‘It cannot be, it cannot be,’ he added;
‘and yet I would like well to see him face to face.’
‘Do you know him, Doctor?’ asked the undertaker,
with a gasp.
‘God forbid!’ was the reply. ‘And yet the name is a
strange one; it were too much to fancy two. Tell me,
landlord, is he old?’
‘Well,’ said the host, ‘he’s not a young man, to be
sure, and his hair is white; but he looks younger than
you.’
‘He is older, though; years older. But,’ with a slap
upon the table, ‘it’s the rum you see in my face —
rum and sin. This man, perhaps, may have an easy
conscience and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear
‘If you know this doctor,’ I ventured to remark, after
a somewhat awful pause, ‘I should gather that you do
not share the landlord’s good opinion.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with sudden decision, ‘I must see him
face to face.’
There was another pause, and then a door was closed
rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard
upon the stair.
‘That’s the doctor,’ cried the landlord. ‘Look sharp,
and you can catch him.’
It was but two steps from the small parlour to the
door of the old George Inn; the wide oak staircase
landed almost in the street; there was room for a
Turkey rug and nothing more between the threshold
and the last round of the descent; but this little space
was every evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the
light upon the stair and the great signal–lamp below
the sign, but by the warm radiance of the bar–room
window. The George thus brightly advertised itself to
passers–by in the cold street. Fettes walked steadily
to the spot, and we, who were hanging behind, beheld
the two men meet, as one of them had phrased it, face
to face. Dr. Macfarlane was alert and vigorous. His
white hair set off his pale and placid, although
energetic, countenance. He was richly dressed in the
finest of broadcloth and the whitest of linen, with a
great gold watch–chain, and studs and spectacles of
the same precious material. He wore a broad– folded
tie, white and speckled with lilac, and he carried on
his arm a comfortable driving–coat of fur. There was
no doubt but he became his years, breathing, as he
did, of wealth and consideration; and it was a
surprising contrast to see our parlour sot — bald,
dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old camlet cloak —
confront him at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Macfarlane!’ he said somewhat loudly, more like a
herald than a friend.
The great doctor pulled up short on the fourth step, as
though the familiarity of the address surprised and
somewhat shocked his dignity.
‘Toddy Macfarlane!’ repeated Fettes.
32
The London man almost staggered. He stared for the
swiftest of seconds at the man before him, glanced
behind him with a sort of scare, and then in a startled
whisper, ‘Fettes!’ he said, ‘You!’
‘Ay,’ said the other, ‘me! Did you think I was dead
too? We are not so easy shut of our acquaintance.’
‘Hush, hush!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Hush, hush! this
meeting is so unexpected — I can see you are
unmanned. I hardly knew you, I confess, at first; but I
am overjoyed — overjoyed to have this opportunity.
For the present it must be how–d’ye–do and good–
bye in one, for my fly is waiting, and I must not fail
the train; but you shall — let me see — yes — you
shall give me your address, and you can count on
early news of me. We must do something for you,
Fettes. I fear you are out at elbows; but we must see
to that for auld lang syne, as once we sang at
suppers.’
‘Money!’ cried Fettes; ‘money from you! The money
that I had from you is lying where I cast it in the
rain.’
Dr. Macfarlane had talked himself into some measure
of superiority and confidence, but the uncommon
energy of this refusal cast him back into his first
confusion.
A horrible, ugly look came and went across his
almost venerable countenance. ‘My dear fellow,’ he
said, ‘be it as you please; my last thought is to offend
you. I would intrude on none. I will leave you my
address, however — ’
‘I do not wish it — I do not wish to know the roof
that shelters you,’ interrupted the other. ‘I heard your
name; I feared it might be you; I wished to know if,
after all, there were a God; I know now that there is
none. Begone!’
He still stood in the middle of the rug, between the
stair and doorway; and the great London physician, in
order to escape, would be forced to step to one side.
It was plain that he hesitated before the thought of
this humiliation. White as he was, there was a
dangerous glitter in his spectacles; but while he still
paused uncertain, he became aware that the driver of
his fly was peering in from the street at this unusual
scene and caught a glimpse at the same time of our
little body from the parlour, huddled by the corner of
the bar. The presence of so many witnesses decided
him at once to flee. He crouched together, brushing
on the wainscot, and made a dart like a serpent,
striking for the door. But his tribulation was not yet
entirely at an end, for even as he was passing Fettes
clutched him by the arm and these words came in a
whisper, and yet painfully distinct, ‘Have you seen it
again?’
The great rich London doctor cried out aloud with a
sharp, throttling cry; he dashed his questioner across
the open space, and, with his hands over his head,
fled out of the door like a detected thief. Before it had
occurred to one of us to make a movement the fly
was already rattling toward the station. The scene
was over like a dream, but the dream had left proofs
and traces of its passage. Next day the servant found
the fine gold spectacles broken on the threshold, and
that very night we were all standing breathless by the
bar– room window, and Fettes at our side, sober,
pale, and resolute in look.
‘God protect us, Mr. Fettes!’ said the landlord,
coming first into possession of his customary senses.
‘What in the universe is all this? These are strange
things you have been saying.’
Fettes turned toward us; he looked us each in
succession in the face. ‘See if you can hold your
tongues,’ said he. ‘That man Macfarlane is not safe to
cross; those that have done so already have repented
it too late.’
And then, without so much as finishing his third
glass, far less waiting for the other two, he bade us
good–bye and went forth, under the lamp of the hotel,
into the black night.
We three turned to our places in the parlour, with the
big red fire and four clear candles; and as we
recapitulated what had passed, the first chill of our
surprise soon changed into a glow of curiosity. We
sat late; it was the latest session I have known in the
old George. Each man, before we parted, had his
theory that he was bound to prove; and none of us
had any nearer business in this world than to track
out the past of our condemned companion, and
surprise the secret that he shared with the great
London doctor. It is no great boast, but I believe I
was a better hand at worming out a story than either
of my fellows at the George; and perhaps there is
now no other man alive who could narrate to you the
following foul and unnatural events.
In his young days Fettes studied medicine in the
schools of Edinburgh. He had talent of a kind, the
talent that picks up swiftly what it hears and readily
retails it for its own. He worked little at home; but he
was civil, attentive, and intelligent in the presence of
his masters. They soon picked him out as a lad who
listened closely and remembered well; nay, strange as
it seemed to me when I first heard it, he was in those
33
days well favoured, and pleased by his exterior.
There was, at that period, a certain extramural teacher
of anatomy, whom I shall here designate by the letter
K. His name was subsequently too well known. The
man who bore it skulked through the streets of
Edinburgh in disguise, while the mob that applauded
at the execution of Burke called loudly for the blood
of his employer. But Mr. K– was then at the top of
his vogue; he enjoyed a popularity due partly to his
own talent and address, partly to the incapacity of his
rival, the university professor. The students, at least,
swore by his name, and Fettes believed himself, and
was believed by others, to have laid the foundations
of success when he had acquired the favour of this
meteorically famous man. Mr. K– was a BON
VIVANT as well as an accomplished teacher; he
liked a sly illusion no less than a careful preparation.
In both capacities Fettes enjoyed and deserved his
notice, and by the second year of his attendance he
held the half–regular position of second demonstrator
or sub– assistant in his class.
In this capacity the charge of the theatre and lecture–
room devolved in particular upon his shoulders. He
had to answer for the cleanliness of the premises and
the conduct of the other students, and it was a part of
his duty to supply, receive, and divide the various
subjects. It was with a view to this last — at that time
very delicate — affair that he was lodged by Mr. K–
in the same wynd, and at last in the same building,
with the dissecting–rooms. Here, after a night of
turbulent pleasures, his hand still tottering, his sight
still misty and confused, he would be called out of
bed in the black hours before the winter dawn by the
unclean and desperate interlopers who supplied the
table. He would open the door to these men, since
infamous throughout the land. He would help them
with their tragic burden, pay them their sordid price,
and remain alone, when they were gone, with the
unfriendly relics of humanity. From such a scene he
would return to snatch another hour or two of
slumber, to repair the abuses of the night, and refresh
himself for the labours of the day.
Few lads could have been more insensible to the
impressions of a life thus passed among the ensigns
of mortality. His mind was closed against all general
considerations. He was incapable of interest in the
fate and fortunes of another, the slave of his own
desires and low ambitions. Cold, light, and selfish in
the last resort, he had that modicum of prudence,
miscalled morality, which keeps a man from
inconvenient drunkenness or punishable theft. He
coveted, besides, a measure of consideration from his
masters and his fellow–pupils, and he had no desire
to fail conspicuously in the external parts of life.
Thus he made it his pleasure to gain some distinction
in his studies, and day after day rendered
unimpeachable eye–service to his employer, Mr. K–.
For his day of work he indemnified himself by nights
of roaring, blackguardly enjoyment; and when that
balance had been struck, the organ that he called his
conscience declared itself content.
The supply of subjects was a continual trouble to him
as well as to his master. In that large and busy class,
the raw material of the anatomists kept perpetually
running out; and the business thus rendered necessary
was not only unpleasant in itself, but threatened
dangerous consequences to all who were concerned.
It was the policy of Mr. K– to ask no questions in his
dealings with the trade. ‘They bring the body, and we
pay the price,’ he used to say, dwelling on the
alliteration — ‘QUID PRO QUO.’ And, again, and
somewhat profanely, ‘Ask no questions,’ he would
tell his assistants, ‘for conscience’ sake.’ There was
no understanding that the subjects were provided by
the crime of murder. Had that idea been broached to
him in words, he would have recoiled in horror; but
the lightness of his speech upon so grave a matter
was, in itself, an offence against good manners, and a
temptation to the men with whom he dealt. Fettes, for
instance, had often remarked to himself upon the
singular freshness of the bodies. He had been struck
again and again by the hang–dog, abominable looks
of the ruffians who came to him before the dawn; and
putting things together clearly in his private thoughts,
he perhaps attributed a meaning too immoral and too
categorical to the unguarded counsels of his master.
He understood his duty, in short, to have three
branches: to take what was brought, to pay the price,
and to avert the eye from any evidence of crime.
One November morning this policy of silence was
put sharply to the test. He had been awake all night
with a racking toothache — pacing his room like a
caged beast or throwing himself in fury on his bed —
and had fallen at last into that profound, uneasy
slumber that so often follows on a night of pain,
when he was awakened by the third or fourth angry
repetition of the concerted signal. There was a thin,
bright moonshine; it was bitter cold, windy, and
frosty; the town had not yet awakened, but an
indefinable stir already preluded the noise and
business of the day. The ghouls had come later than
usual, and they seemed more than usually eager to be
gone. Fettes, sick with sleep, lighted them upstairs.
He heard their grumbling Irish voices through a
dream; and as they stripped the sack from their sad
merchandise he leaned dozing, with his shoulder
propped against the wall; he had to shake himself to
find the men their money. As he did so his eyes
34
lighted on the dead face. He started; he took two
steps nearer, with the candle raised.
‘Well, what should I do?’ asked Fettes.
‘God Almighty!’ he cried. ‘That is Jane Galbraith!’
‘Do?’ repeated the other. ‘Do you want to do
anything? Least said soonest mended, I should say.’
The men answered nothing, but they shuffled nearer
the door.
‘Some one else might recognise her,’ objected Fettes.
‘She was as well known as the Castle Rock.’
‘I know her, I tell you,’ he continued. ‘She was alive
and hearty yesterday. It’s impossible she can be dead;
it’s impossible you should have got this body fairly.’
‘We’ll hope not,’ said Macfarlane, ‘and if anybody
does — well, you didn’t, don’t you see, and there’s
an end. The fact is, this has been going on too long.
Stir up the mud, and you’ll get K– into the most
unholy trouble; you’ll be in a shocking box yourself.
So will I, if you come to that. I should like to know
how any one of us would look, or what the devil we
should have to say for ourselves, in any Christian
witness–box. For me, you know there’s one thing
certain — that, practically speaking, all our subjects
have been murdered.’
‘Sure, sir, you’re mistaken entirely,’ said one of the
men.
But the other looked Fettes darkly in the eyes, and
demanded the money on the spot.
It was impossible to misconceive the threat or to
exaggerate the danger. The lad’s heart failed him. He
stammered some excuses, counted out the sum, and
saw his hateful visitors depart. No sooner were they
gone than he hastened to confirm his doubts. By a
dozen unquestionable marks he identified the girl he
had jested with the day before. He saw, with horror,
marks upon her body that might well betoken
violence. A panic seized him, and he took refuge in
his room. There he reflected at length over the
discovery that he had made; considered soberly the
bearing of Mr. K–’s instructions and the danger to
himself of interference in so serious a business, and
at last, in sore perplexity, determined to wait for the
advice of his immediate superior, the class assistant.
This was a young doctor, Wolfe Macfarlane, a high
favourite among all the reckless students, clever,
dissipated, and unscrupulous to the last degree. He
had travelled and studied abroad. His manners were
agreeable and a little forward. He was an authority on
the stage, skilful on the ice or the links with skate or
golf–club; he dressed with nice audacity, and, to put
the finishing touch upon his glory, he kept a gig and a
strong trotting–horse. With Fettes he was on terms of
intimacy; indeed, their relative positions called for
some community of life; and when subjects were
scarce the pair would drive far into the country in
Macfarlane’s gig, visit and desecrate some lonely
graveyard, and return before dawn with their booty to
the door of the dissecting–room.
On that particular morning Macfarlane arrived
somewhat earlier than his wont. Fettes heard him,
and met him on the stairs, told him his story, and
showed him the cause of his alarm. Macfarlane
examined the marks on her body.
‘Yes,’ he said with a nod, ‘it looks fishy.’
‘Macfarlane!’ cried Fettes.
‘Come now!’ sneered the other. ‘As if you hadn’t
suspected it yourself!’
‘Suspecting is one thing — ’
‘And proof another. Yes, I know; and I’m as sorry as
you are this should have come here,’ tapping the
body with his cane. ‘The next best thing for me is not
to recognise it; and,’ he added coolly, ‘I don’t. You
may, if you please. I don’t dictate, but I think a man
of the world would do as I do; and I may add, I fancy
that is what K– would look for at our hands. The
question is, Why did he choose us two for his
assistants? And I answer, because he didn’t want old
wives.’
This was the tone of all others to affect the mind of a
lad like Fettes. He agreed to imitate Macfarlane. The
body of the unfortunate girl was duly dissected, and
no one remarked or appeared to recognise her.
One afternoon, when his day’s work was over, Fettes
dropped into a popular tavern and found Macfarlane
sitting with a stranger. This was a small man, very
pale and dark, with coal–black eyes. The cut of his
features gave a promise of intellect and refinement
which was but feebly realised in his manners, for he
proved, upon a nearer acquaintance, coarse, vulgar,
and stupid. He exercised, however, a very remarkable
control over Macfarlane; issued orders like the Great
Bashaw; became inflamed at the least discussion or
delay, and commented rudely on the servility with
which he was obeyed. This most offensive person
took a fancy to Fettes on the spot, plied him with
drinks, and honoured him with unusual confidences
35
on his past career. If a tenth part of what he confessed
were true, he was a very loathsome rogue; and the
lad’s vanity was tickled by the attention of so
experienced a man.
‘I’m a pretty bad fellow myself,’ the stranger
remarked, ‘but Macfarlane is the boy — Toddy
Macfarlane I call him. Toddy, order your friend
another glass.’ Or it might be, ‘Toddy, you jump up
and shut the door.’ ‘Toddy hates me,’ he said again.
‘Oh yes, Toddy, you do!’
‘Don’t you call me that confounded name,’ growled
Macfarlane.
‘Hear him! Did you ever see the lads play knife? He
would like to do that all over my body,’ remarked the
stranger.
‘We medicals have a better way than that,’ said
Fettes. ‘When we dislike a dead friend of ours, we
dissect him.’
Macfarlane looked up sharply, as though this jest
were scarcely to his mind.
The afternoon passed. Gray, for that was the
stranger’s name, invited Fettes to join them at dinner,
ordered a feast so sumptuous that the tavern was
thrown into commotion, and when all was done
commanded Macfarlane to settle the bill. It was late
before they separated; the man Gray was incapably
drunk. Macfarlane, sobered by his fury, chewed the
cud of the money he had been forced to squander and
the slights he had been obliged to swallow. Fettes,
with various liquors singing in his head, returned
home with devious footsteps and a mind entirely in
abeyance. Next day Macfarlane was absent from the
class, and Fettes smiled to himself as he imagined
him still squiring the intolerable Gray from tavern to
tavern. As soon as the hour of liberty had struck he
posted from place to place in quest of his last night’s
companions. He could find them, however, nowhere;
so returned early to his rooms, went early to bed, and
slept the sleep of the just.
and laid it on the table, Macfarlane made at first as if
he were going away. Then he paused and seemed to
hesitate; and then, ‘You had better look at the face,’
said he, in tones of some constraint. ‘You had better,’
he repeated, as Fettes only stared at him in wonder.
‘But where, and how, and when did you come by it?’
cried the other.
‘Look at the face,’ was the only answer.
Fettes was staggered; strange doubts assailed him. He
looked from the young doctor to the body, and then
back again. At last, with a start, he did as he was
bidden. He had almost expected the sight that met his
eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the
rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of
sackcloth, the man whom he had left well clad and
full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern,
awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the
terrors of the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which
re–echoed in his soul, that two whom he had known
should have come to lie upon these icy tables. Yet
these were only secondary thoughts. His first concern
regarded Wolfe. Unprepared for a challenge so
momentous, he knew not how to look his comrade in
the face. He durst not meet his eye, and he had
neither words nor voice at his command.
It was Macfarlane himself who made the first
advance. He came up quietly behind and laid his
hand gently but firmly on the other’s shoulder.
‘Richardson,’ said he, ‘may have the head.’
Now Richardson was a student who had long been
anxious for that portion of the human subject to
dissect. There was no answer, and the murderer
resumed: ‘Talking of business, you must pay me;
your accounts, you see, must tally.’
Fettes found a voice, the ghost of his own: ‘Pay you!’
he cried. ‘Pay you for that?’
At four in the morning he was awakened by the well–
known signal. Descending to the door, he was filled
with astonishment to find Macfarlane with his gig,
and in the gig one of those long and ghastly packages
with which he was so well acquainted.
‘Why, yes, of course you must. By all means and on
every possible account, you must,’ returned the other.
‘I dare not give it for nothing, you dare not take it for
nothing; it would compromise us both. This is
another case like Jane Galbraith’s. The more things
are wrong the more we must act as if all were right.
Where does old K– keep his money?’
‘What?’ he cried. ‘Have you been out alone? How
did you manage?’
‘There,’ answered Fettes hoarsely, pointing to a
cupboard in the corner.
But Macfarlane silenced him roughly, bidding him
turn to business. When they had got the body upstairs
‘Give me the key, then,’ said the other, calmly,
holding out his hand.
36
There was an instant’s hesitation, and the die was
cast. Macfarlane could not suppress a nervous twitch,
the infinitesimal mark of an immense relief, as he felt
the key between his fingers. He opened the cupboard,
brought out pen and ink and a paper–book that stood
in one compartment, and separated from the funds in
a drawer a sum suitable to the occasion.
‘Now, look here,’ he said, ‘there is the payment made
— first proof of your good faith: first step to your
security. You have now to clinch it by a second.
Enter the payment in your book, and then you for
your part may defy the devil.’
The next few seconds were for Fettes an agony of
thought; but in balancing his terrors it was the most
immediate that triumphed. Any future difficulty
seemed almost welcome if he could avoid a present
quarrel with Macfarlane. He set down the candle
which he had been carrying all this time, and with a
steady hand entered the date, the nature, and the
amount of the transaction.
‘And now,’ said Macfarlane, ‘it’s only fair that you
should pocket the lucre. I’ve had my share already.
By the bye, when a man of the world falls into a bit
of luck, has a few shillings extra in his pocket — I’m
ashamed to speak of it, but there’s a rule of conduct
in the case. No treating, no purchase of expensive
class–books, no squaring of old debts; borrow, don’t
lend.’
‘Macfarlane,’ began Fettes, still somewhat hoarsely,
‘I have put my neck in a halter to oblige you.’
‘To oblige me?’ cried Wolfe. ‘Oh, come! You did, as
near as I can see the matter, what you downright had
to do in self– defence. Suppose I got into trouble,
where would you be? This second little matter flows
clearly from the first. Mr. Gray is the continuation of
Miss Galbraith. You can’t begin and then stop. If you
begin, you must keep on beginning; that’s the truth.
No rest for the wicked.’
A horrible sense of blackness and the treachery of
fate seized hold upon the soul of the unhappy student.
‘My God!’ he cried, ‘but what have I done? and when
did I begin? To be made a class assistant — in the
name of reason, where’s the harm in that? Service
wanted the position; Service might have got it.
Would HE have been where I am now?’
‘My dear fellow,’ said Macfarlane, ‘what a boy you
are! What harm HAS come to you? What harm CAN
come to you if you hold your tongue? Why, man, do
you know what this life is? There are two squads of
us — the lions and the lambs. If you’re a lamb, you’ll
come to lie upon these tables like Gray or Jane
Galbraith; if you’re a lion, you’ll live and drive a
horse like me, like K–, like all the world with any wit
or courage. You’re staggered at the first. But look at
K–! My dear fellow, you’re clever, you have pluck. I
like you, and K– likes you. You were born to lead the
hunt; and I tell you, on my honour and my experience
of life, three days from now you’ll laugh at all these
scarecrows like a High School boy at a farce.’
And with that Macfarlane took his departure and
drove off up the wynd in his gig to get under cover
before daylight. Fettes was thus left alone with his
regrets. He saw the miserable peril in which he stood
involved. He saw, with inexpressible dismay, that
there was no limit to his weakness, and that, from
concession to concession, he had fallen from the
arbiter of Macfarlane’s destiny to his paid and
helpless accomplice. He would have given the world
to have been a little braver at the time, but it did not
occur to him that he might still be brave. The secret
of Jane Galbraith and the cursed entry in the day–
book closed his mouth.
Hours passed; the class began to arrive; the members
of the unhappy Gray were dealt out to one and to
another, and received without remark. Richardson
was made happy with the head; and before the hour
of freedom rang Fettes trembled with exultation to
perceive how far they had already gone toward
safety.
For two days he continued to watch, with increasing
joy, the dreadful process of disguise.
On the third day Macfarlane made his appearance. He
had been ill, he said; but he made up for lost time by
the energy with which he directed the students. To
Richardson in particular he extended the most
valuable assistance and advice, and that student,
encouraged by the praise of the demonstrator, burned
high with ambitious hopes, and saw the medal
already in his grasp.
Before the week was out Macfarlane’s prophecy had
been fulfilled. Fettes had outlived his terrors and had
forgotten his baseness. He began to plume himself
upon his courage, and had so arranged the story in his
mind that he could look back on these events with an
unhealthy pride. Of his accomplice he saw but little.
They met, of course, in the business of the class; they
received their orders together from Mr. K–. At times
they had a word or two in private, and Macfarlane
was from first to last particularly kind and jovial. But
it was plain that he avoided any reference to their
common secret; and even when Fettes whispered to
37
him that he had cast in his lot with the lions and
foresworn the lambs, he only signed to him smilingly
to hold his peace.
At length an occasion arose which threw the pair
once more into a closer union. Mr. K– was again
short of subjects; pupils were eager, and it was a part
of this teacher’s pretensions to be always well
supplied. At the same time there came the news of a
burial in the rustic graveyard of Glencorse. Time has
little changed the place in question. It stood then, as
now, upon a cross road, out of call of human
habitations, and buried fathom deep in the foliage of
six cedar trees. The cries of the sheep upon the
neighbouring hills, the streamlets upon either hand,
one loudly singing among pebbles, the other dripping
furtively from pond to pond, the stir of the wind in
mountainous old flowering chestnuts, and once in
seven days the voice of the bell and the old tunes of
the precentor, were the only sounds that disturbed the
silence around the rural church. The Resurrection
Man — to use a byname of the period — was not to
be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary
piety. It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate
the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn
by the feet of worshippers and mourners, and the
offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection.
To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than
commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood
or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the
body–snatcher, far from being repelled by natural
respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the
task. To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful
expectation of a far different awakening, there came
that hasty, lamp–lit, terror–haunted resurrection of
the spade and mattock. The coffin was forced, the
cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in
sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless
byways, were at length exposed to uttermost
indignities before a class of gaping boys.
Somewhat as two vultures may swoop upon a dying
lamb, Fettes and Macfarlane were to be let loose
upon a grave in that green and quiet resting–place.
The wife of a farmer, a woman who had lived for
sixty years, and been known for nothing but good
butter and a godly conversation, was to be rooted
from her grave at midnight and carried, dead and
naked, to that far–away city that she had always
honoured with her Sunday’s best; the place beside
her family was to be empty till the crack of doom; her
innocent and almost venerable members to be
exposed to that last curiosity of the anatomist.
Late one afternoon the pair set forth, well wrapped in
cloaks and furnished with a formidable bottle. It
rained without remission — a cold, dense, lashing
rain. Now and again there blew a puff of wind, but
these sheets of falling water kept it down. Bottle and
all, it was a sad and silent drive as far as Penicuik,
where they were to spend the evening. They stopped
once, to hide their implements in a thick bush not far
from the churchyard, and once again at the Fisher’s
Tryst, to have a toast before the kitchen fire and vary
their nips of whisky with a glass of ale. When they
reached their journey’s end the gig was housed, the
horse was fed and comforted, and the two young
doctors in a private room sat down to the best dinner
and the best wine the house afforded. The lights, the
fire, the beating rain upon the window, the cold,
incongruous work that lay before them, added zest to
their enjoyment of the meal. With every glass their
cordiality increased. Soon Macfarlane handed a little
pile of gold to his companion.
‘A compliment,’ he said. ‘Between friends these little
d–d accommodations ought to fly like pipe–lights.’
Fettes pocketed the money, and applauded the
sentiment to the echo. ‘You are a philosopher,’ he
cried. ‘I was an ass till I knew you. You and K–
between you, by the Lord Harry! but you’ll make a
man of me.’
‘Of course we shall,’ applauded Macfarlane. ‘A man?
I tell you, it required a man to back me up the other
morning. There are some big, brawling, forty–year–
old cowards who would have turned sick at the look
of the d–d thing; but not you — you kept your head. I
watched you.’
‘Well, and why not?’ Fettes thus vaunted himself. ‘It
was no affair of mine. There was nothing to gain on
the one side but disturbance, and on the other I could
count on your gratitude, don’t you see?’ And he
slapped his pocket till the gold pieces rang.
Macfarlane somehow felt a certain touch of alarm at
these unpleasant words. He may have regretted that
he had taught his young companion so successfully,
but he had no time to interfere, for the other noisily
continued in this boastful strain:–
‘The great thing is not to be afraid. Now, between
you and me, I don’t want to hang — that’s practical;
but for all cant, Macfarlane, I was born with a
contempt. Hell, God, Devil, right, wrong, sin, crime,
and all the old gallery of curiosities — they may
frighten boys, but men of the world, like you and me,
despise them. Here’s to the memory of Gray!’
It was by this time growing somewhat late. The gig,
according to order, was brought round to the door
38
with both lamps brightly shining, and the young men
had to pay their bill and take the road. They
announced that they were bound for Peebles, and
drove in that direction till they were clear of the last
houses of the town; then, extinguishing the lamps,
returned upon their course, and followed a by–road
toward Glencorse. There was no sound but that of
their own passage, and the incessant, strident pouring
of the rain. It was pitch dark; here and there a white
gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a
short space across the night; but for the most part it
was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they
picked their way through that resonant blackness to
their solemn and isolated destination. In the sunken
woods that traverse the neighbourhood of the
burying– ground the last glimmer failed them, and it
became necessary to kindle a match and re–illumine
one of the lanterns of the gig. Thus, under the
dripping trees, and environed by huge and moving
shadows, they reached the scene of their unhallowed
labours.
They were both experienced in such affairs, and
powerful with the spade; and they had scarce been
twenty minutes at their task before they were
rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin lid. At the
same moment Macfarlane, having hurt his hand upon
a stone, flung it carelessly above his head. The grave,
in which they now stood almost to the shoulders, was
close to the edge of the plateau of the graveyard; and
the gig lamp had been propped, the better to
illuminate their labours, against a tree, and on the
immediate verge of the steep bank descending to the
stream. Chance had taken a sure aim with the stone.
Then came a clang of broken glass; night fell upon
them; sounds alternately dull and ringing announced
the bounding of the lantern down the bank, and its
occasional collision with the trees. A stone or two,
which it had dislodged in its descent, rattled behind it
into the profundities of the glen; and then silence,
like night, resumed its sway; and they might bend
their hearing to its utmost pitch, but naught was to be
heard except the rain, now marching to the wind, now
steadily falling over miles of open country.
They were so nearly at an end of their abhorred task
that they judged it wisest to complete it in the dark.
The coffin was exhumed and broken open; the body
inserted in the dripping sack and carried between
them to the gig; one mounted to keep it in its place,
and the other, taking the horse by the mouth, groped
along by wall and bush until they reached the wider
road by the Fisher’s Tryst. Here was a faint, diffused
radiancy, which they hailed like daylight; by that they
pushed the horse to a good pace and began to rattle
along merrily in the direction of the town.
They had both been wetted to the skin during their
operations, and now, as the gig jumped among the
deep ruts, the thing that stood propped between them
fell now upon one and now upon the other. At every
repetition of the horrid contact each instinctively
repelled it with the greater haste; and the process,
natural although it was, began to tell upon the nerves
of the companions. Macfarlane made some ill–
favoured jest about the farmer’s wife, but it came
hollowly from his lips, and was allowed to drop in
silence. Still their unnatural burden bumped from
side to side; and now the head would be laid, as if in
confidence, upon their shoulders, and now the
drenching sack–cloth would flap icily about their
faces. A creeping chill began to possess the soul of
Fettes. He peered at the bundle, and it seemed
somehow larger than at first. All over the country–
side, and from every degree of distance, the farm
dogs accompanied their passage with tragic
ululations; and it grew and grew upon his mind that
some unnatural miracle had been accomplished, that
some nameless change had befallen the dead body,
and that it was in fear of their unholy burden that the
dogs were howling.
‘For God’s sake,’ said he, making a great effort to
arrive at speech, ‘for God’s sake, let’s have a light!’
Seemingly Macfarlane was affected in the same
direction; for, though he made no reply, he stopped
the horse, passed the reins to his companion, got
down, and proceeded to kindle the remaining lamp.
They had by that time got no farther than the cross–
road down to Auchenclinny. The rain still poured as
though the deluge were returning, and it was no easy
matter to make a light in such a world of wet and
darkness. When at last the flickering blue flame had
been transferred to the wick and began to expand and
clarify, and shed a wide circle of misty brightness
round the gig, it became possible for the two young
men to see each other and the thing they had along
with them. The rain had moulded the rough sacking
to the outlines of the body underneath; the head was
distinct from the trunk, the shoulders plainly
modelled; something at once spectral and human
riveted their eyes upon the ghastly comrade of their
drive.
For some time Macfarlane stood motionless, holding
up the lamp. A nameless dread was swathed, like a
wet sheet, about the body, and tightened the white
skin upon the face of Fettes; a fear that was
meaningless, a horror of what could not be, kept
mounting to his brain. Another beat of the watch, and
he had spoken. But his comrade forestalled him.
39
‘That is not a woman,’ said Macfarlane, in a hushed
voice.
‘It was a woman when we put her in,’ whispered
Fettes.
‘Hold that lamp,’ said the other. ‘I must see her face.’
And as Fettes took the lamp his companion untied the
fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from
the head. The light fell very clear upon the dark,
well–moulded features and smooth shaven cheeks of
a too familiar countenance, often beheld in dreams of
both of these young men. A wild yell rang up into the
night; each leaped from his own side into the
roadway: the lamp fell, broke, and was extinguished;
and the horse, terrified by this unusual commotion,
bounded and went off toward Edinburgh at a gallop,
bearing along with it, sole occupant of the gig, the
body of the dead and long–dissected Gray.
___________________________________________
A Jury of Her Peers
Susan Glaspell
When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a
cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen
scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her
eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was
no ordinary thing that called her away--it was
probably further from ordinary than anything that had
ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye
took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for
leaving: her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour
sifted and half unsifted.
She hated to see things half done; but she had been at
that when the team from town stopped to get Mr.
Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say his
wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too--adding, with
a grin, that he guessed she was getting scary and
wanted another woman along. So she had dropped
everything right where it was.
"Martha!" now came her husband's impatient voice.
"Don't keep folks waiting out here in the cold."
She again opened the storm-door, and this time
joined the three men and the one woman waiting for
her in the big two-seated buggy.
After she had the robes tucked around her she took
another look at the woman who sat beside her on the
back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at
the county fair, and the thing she remembered about
her was that she didn't seem like a sheriff's wife. She
was small and thin and didn't have a strong voice.
Mrs. Gorman, sheriff's wife before Gorman went out
and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow
seemed to be backing up the law with every word.
But if Mrs. Peters didn't look like a sheriff's wife,
Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to
a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected
sheriff--a heavy man with a big voice, who was
particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make
it plain that he knew the difference between criminals
and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs.
Hale's mind, with a stab, that this man who was so
pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the
Wrights' now as a sheriff.
"The country's not very pleasant this time of year,"
Mrs. Peters at last ventured, as if she felt they ought
to be talking as well as the men.
Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had
gone up a little hill and could see the Wright place
now, and seeing it did not make her feel like talking.
It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It
had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was
down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were
lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking at it
and talking about what had happened. The county
attorney was bending to one side of the buggy, and
kept looking steadily at the place as they drew up to
it.
"I'm glad you came with me," Mrs. Peters said
nervously, as the two women were about to follow
the men in through the kitchen door.
Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her hand
on the knob, Martha Hale had a moment of feeling
she could not cross that threshold. And the reason it
seemed she couldn't cross it now was simply because
she hadn't crossed it before. Time and time again it
had been in her mind, "I ought to go over and see
Minnie Foster"--she still thought of her as Minnie
Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs.
Wright. And then there was always something to do
and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now
she could come.
The men went over to the stove. The women stood
close together by the door. Young Henderson, the
county attorney, turned around and said, "Come up to
the fire, ladies."
Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. "I'm
not--cold," she said.
And so the two women stood by the door, at first not
even so much as looking around the kitchen.
40
The men talked for a minute about what a good thing
it was the sheriff had sent his deputy out that morning
to make a fire for them, and then Sheriff Peters
stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his outer
coat, and leaned his hands on the kitchen table in a
way that seemed to mark the beginning of official
business. "Now, Mr. Hale," he said in a sort of semiofficial voice, "before we move things about, you tell
Mr. Henderson just what it was you saw when you
came here yesterday morning."
The county attorney was looking around the kitchen.
"By the way," he said, "has anything been moved?"
He turned to the sheriff. "Are things just as you left
them yesterday?"
Peters looked from cupboard to sink; from that to a
small worn rocker a little to one side of the kitchen
table.
"It's just the same."
"Somebody should have been left here yesterday,"
said the county attorney.
"Oh--yesterday," returned the sheriff, with a little
gesture as of yesterday having been more than he
could bear to think of. "When I had to send Frank to
Morris Center for that man who went crazy--let me
tell you. I had my hands full yesterday. I knew you
could get back from Omaha by today, George, and as
long as I went over everything here myself--"
"Well, Mr. Hale," said the county attorney, in a way
of letting what was past and gone go, "tell just what
happened when you came here yesterday morning."
Mrs. Hale, still leaning against the door, had that
sinking feeling of the mother whose child is about to
speak a piece. Lewis often wandered along and got
things mixed up in a story. She hoped he would tell
this straight and plain, and not say unnecessary things
that would just make things harder for Minnie Foster.
He didn't begin at once, and she noticed that he
looked queer--as if standing in that kitchen and
having to tell what he had seen there yesterday
morning made him almost sick.
"Yes, Mr. Hale?" the county attorney reminded.
"Harry and I had started to town with a load of
potatoes," Mrs. Hale's husband began.
Harry was Mrs. Hale's oldest boy. He wasn't with
them now, for the very good reason that those
potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was
taking them this morning, so he hadn't been home
when the sheriff stopped to say he wanted Mr. Hale
to come over to the Wright place and tell the county
attorney his story there, where he could point it all
out. With all Mrs. Hale's other emotions came the
fear now that maybe Harry wasn't dressed warm
enough--they hadn't any of them realized how that
north wind did bite.
"We come along this road," Hale was going on, with
a motion of his hand to the road over which they had
just come, "and as we got in sight of the house I says
to Harry, 'I'm goin' to see if I can't get John Wright to
take a telephone.' You see," he explained to
Henderson, "unless I can get somebody to go in with
me they won't come out this branch road except for a
price I can't pay. I'd spoke to Wright about it once
before; but he put me off, saying folks talked too
much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet-guess you know about how much he talked himself.
But I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked
about it before his wife, and said all the women-folks
liked the telephones, and that in this lonesome stretch
of road it would be a good thing--well, I said to Harry
that that was what I was going to say--though I said
at the same time that I didn't know as what his wife
wanted made much difference to John--"
Now there he was!--saying things he didn't need to
say. Mrs. Hale tried to catch her husband's eye, but
fortunately the county attorney interrupted with:
"Let's talk about that a little later, Mr. Hale. I do want
to talk about that but, I'm anxious now to get along to
just what happened when you got here."
When he began this time, it was very deliberately and
carefully:
"I didn't see or hear anything. I knocked at the door.
And still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must be
up--it was past eight o'clock. So I knocked again,
louder, and I thought I heard somebody say, 'Come
in.' I wasn't sure--I'm not sure yet. But I opened the
door--this door," jerking a hand toward the door by
which the two women stood. "and there, in that
rocker"--pointing to it--"sat Mrs. Wright."
Everyone in the kitchen looked at the rocker. It came
into Mrs. Hale's mind that that rocker didn't look in
the least like Minnie Foster--the Minnie Foster of
twenty years before. It was a dingy red, with wooden
rungs up the back, and the middle rung was gone, and
the chair sagged to one side.
"How did she--look?" the county attorney was
inquiring.
41
"Well," said Hale, "she looked--queer."
if every one were seeing the woman who had sat
there the morning before.
"How do you mean--queer?"
As he asked it he took out a note-book and pencil.
Mrs. Hale did not like the sight of that pencil. She
kept her eye fixed on her husband, as if to keep him
from saying unnecessary things that would go into
that note-book and make trouble.
Hale did speak guardedly, as if the pencil had
affected him too.
"Well, as if she didn't know what she was going to do
next. And kind of--done up."
"How did she seem to feel about your coming?"
"Why, I don't think she minded--one way or other.
She didn't pay much attention. I said, 'Ho' do, Mrs.
Wright? It's cold, ain't it?' And she said. 'Is it?'--and
went on pleatin' at her apron.
"Well, I was surprised. She didn't ask me to come up
to the stove, or to sit down, but just set there, not
even lookin' at me. And so I said: 'I want to see John.'
"And then she--laughed. I guess you would call it a
laugh.
"I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said, a
little sharp, 'Can I see John?' 'No,' says she--kind of
dull like. 'Ain't he home?' says I. Then she looked at
me. 'Yes,' says she, 'he's home.' 'Then why can't I see
him?' I asked her, out of patience with her now.
'Cause he's dead' says she, just as quiet and dull--and
fell to pleatin' her apron. 'Dead?' says, I, like you do
when you can't take in what you've heard.
"She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited,
but rockin' back and forth.
"'Why--where is he?' says I, not knowing what to say.
"She just pointed upstairs--like this"--pointing to the
room above.
"I got up, with the idea of going up there myself. By
this time I--didn't know what to do. I walked from
there to here; then I says: 'Why, what did he die of?'
"'He died of a rope around his neck,' says she; and
just went on pleatin' at her apron."
Hale stopped speaking, and stood staring at the
rocker, as if he were still seeing the woman who had
sat there the morning before. Nobody spoke; it was as
"And what did you do then?" the county attorney at
last broke the silence.
"I went out and called Harry. I thought I might--need
help. I got Harry in, and we went upstairs." His voice
fell almost to a whisper. "There he was--lying over
the--"
"I think I'd rather have you go into that upstairs," the
county attorney interrupted, "where you can point it
all out. Just go on now with the rest of the story."
"Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It
looked--"
He stopped, his face twitching.
"But Harry, he went up to him, and he said. 'No, he's
dead all right, and we'd better not touch anything.' So
we went downstairs.
"She was still sitting that same way. 'Has anybody
been notified?' I asked. 'No, says she, unconcerned.
"'Who did this, Mrs. Wright?' said Harry. He said it
businesslike, and she stopped pleatin' at her apron. 'I
don't know,' she says. 'You don't know?' says Harry.
'Weren't you sleepin' in the bed with him?' 'Yes,' says
she, 'but I was on the inside. 'Somebody slipped a
rope round his neck and strangled him, and you didn't
wake up?' says Harry. 'I didn't wake up,' she said
after him.
"We may have looked as if we didn't see how that
could be, for after a minute she said, 'I sleep sound.'
"Harry was going to ask her more questions, but I
said maybe that weren't our business; maybe we
ought to let her tell her story first to the coroner or
the sheriff. So Harry went fast as he could over to
High Road--the Rivers' place, where there's a
telephone."
"And what did she do when she knew you had gone
for the coroner?" The attorney got his pencil in his
hand all ready for writing.
"She moved from that chair to this one over here"-Hale pointed to a small chair in the corner--"and just
sat there with her hands held together and lookin
down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some
conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John
wanted to put in a telephone; and at that she started to
42
laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me-scared."
At the sound of a moving pencil the man who was
telling the story looked up.
"I dunno--maybe it wasn't scared," he hastened: "I
wouldn't like to say it was. Soon Harry got back, and
then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr. Peters, and so I
guess that's all I know that you don't."
He said that last with relief, and moved a little, as if
relaxing. Everyone moved a little. The county
attorney walked toward the stair door.
"I guess we'll go upstairs first--then out to the barn
and around there."
He paused and looked around the kitchen.
"You're convinced there was nothing important
here?" he asked the sheriff. "Nothing that would-point to any motive?"
The sheriff too looked all around, as if to re-convince
himself.
"Nothing here but kitchen things," he said, with a
little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.
The county attorney was looking at the cupboard--a
peculiar, ungainly structure, half closet and half
cupboard, the upper part of it being built in the wall,
and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen
cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a
chair and opened the upper part and looked in. After
a moment he drew his hand away sticky.
"I guess before we're through with her she may have
something more serious than preserves to worry
about."
"Oh, well," said Mrs. Hale's husband, with goodnatured superiority, "women are used to worrying
over trifles."
The two women moved a little closer together.
Neither of them spoke. The county attorney seemed
suddenly to remember his manners--and think of his
future.
"And yet," said he, with the gallantry of a young
politician. "for all their worries, what would we do
without the ladies?"
The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went
to the sink and began washing his hands. He turned to
wipe them on the roller towel--whirled it for a cleaner
place.
"Dirty towelsl Not much of a housekeeper, would
you say, ladies?"
He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the
sink.
"There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm,"
said Mrs. Hale stiffly.
"To be sure. And yet"--with a little bow to her--'I
know there are some Dickson County farm-houses
that do not have such roller towels." He gave it a pull
to expose its full length again.
"Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands
aren't always as clean as they might be.
"Here's a nice mess," he said resentfully.
The two women had drawn nearer, and now the
sheriff's wife spoke.
"Ah, loyal to your sex, I see," he laughed. He stopped
and gave her a keen look, "But you and Mrs. Wright
were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too."
"Oh--her fruit," she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for
sympathetic understanding.
Martha Hale shook her head.
She turned back to the county attorney and explained:
"She worried about that when it turned so cold last
night. She said the fire would go out and her jars
might burst."
Mrs. Peters' husband broke into a laugh.
"Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder, and
worrying about her preserves!"
"I've seen little enough of her of late years. I've not
been in this house--it's more than a year."
"And why was that? You didn't like her?"
"I liked her well enough," she replied with spirit.
"Farmers' wives have their hands full, Mr.
Henderson. And then--" She looked around the
kitchen.
"Yes?" he encouraged.
The young attorney set his lips.
43
"It never seemed a very cheerful place," said she,
more to herself than to him.
"I'd hate to have men comin' into my kitchen," she
said testily--"snoopin' round and criticizin'."
"No," he agreed; "I don't think anyone would call it
cheerful. I shouldn't say she had the home-making
instinct."
"Of course it's no more than their duty," said the
sheriff's wife, in her manner of timid acquiescence.
"Well, I don't know as Wright had, either," she
muttered.
"You mean they didn't get on very well?" he was
quick to ask.
"No; I don't mean anything," she answered, with
decision. As she turned a lit- tle away from him, she
added: "But I don't think a place would be any the
cheerfuller for John Wright's bein' in it."
"I'd like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs.
Hale," he said. "I'm anxious to get the lay of things
upstairs now."
He moved toward the stair door, followed by the two
men.
"I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does'll be all right?"
the sheriff inquired. "She was to take in some clothes
for her, you know--and a few little things. We left in
such a hurry yesterday."
The county attorney looked at the two women they
were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.
"Yes--Mrs. Peters," he said, his glance resting on the
woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer
woman who stood behind the sheriff's wife. "Of
course Mrs. Peters is one of us," he said, in a manner
of entrusting responsibility. "And keep your eye out,
Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No
telling; you women might come upon a clue to the
motive--and that's the thing we need."
Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a
showman getting ready for a pleasantry.
"But would the women know a clue if they did come
upon it?" he said; and, having delivered himself of
this, he followed the others through the stair door.
The women stood motionless and silent, listening to
the footsteps, first upon the stairs, then in the room
above them.
Then, as if releasing herself from something strange.
Mrs. Hale began to arrange the dirty pans under the
sink, which the county attorney's disdainful push of
the foot had deranged.
"Duty's all right," replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; "but I
guess that deputy sheriff that come out to make the
fire might have got a little of this on." She gave the
roller towel a pull. 'Wish I'd thought of that sooner!
Seems mean to talk about her for not having things
slicked up, when she had to come away in such a
hurry."
She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not
"slicked up." Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar
on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket,
and beside it was a paper bag--half full.
Mrs. HaIe moved toward it.
"She was putting this in there," she said to herself-slowly.
She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home--half
sifted, half not sifted. She had been interrupted, and
had left things half done. What had interrupted
Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half
done? She made a move as if to finish it,--unfinished
things always bothered her,--and then she glanced
around and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching her-and she didn't want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she
had got of work begun and then--for some reason-not finished.
"It's a shame about her fruit," she said, and walked
toward the cupboard that the county attorney had
opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: "I wonder
if it's all gone."
It was a sorry enough looking sight, but "Here's one
that's all right," she said at last. She held it toward the
light. "This is cherries, too." She looked again. "I
declare I believe that's the only one."
With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to the
sink, and wiped off the bottle.
"She'Il feel awful bad, after all her hard work in the
hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my
cherries last summer.
She set the bottle on the table, and, with another sigh,
started to sit down in the rocker. But she did not sit
down. Something kept her from sitting down in that
chair. She straightened--stepped back, and, half
44
turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman
who had sat there "pleatin' at her apron."
She took the small gray shawl from behind the door
leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.
The thin voice of the sheriff's wife broke in upon her:
"I must be getting those things from the front-room
closet." She opened the door into the other room,
started in, stepped back. "You coming with me, Mrs.
Hale?" she asked nervously. "You--you could help
me get them."
Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the
other woman, "Mrs. Peters!"
They were soon back--the stark coldness of that shutup room was not a thing to linger in.
A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs.
Peters' eyes.
"My!" said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the
table and hurrying to the stove.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, in a voice that seemed
to shink away from the subject.
Mrs. Hale stood examining the clothes the woman
who was being detained in town had said she wanted.
"Well, I don't think she did," affirmed Mrs. Hale
stoutly. "Asking for an apron, and her little shawl.
Worryin' about her fruit."
"Wright was close!" she exclaimed, holding up a
shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much
making over. "I think maybe that's why she kept so
much to herself. I s'pose she felt she couldn't do her
part; and then, you don't enjoy things when you feel
shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively-when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls,
singing in the choir. But that--oh, that was twenty
years ago."
With a carefulness in which there was something
tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them
at one corner of the table. She looked up at Mrs.
Peters, and there was something in the other woman's
look that irritated her.
"She don't care," she said to herself. "Much
difference it makes to her whether Minnie Foster had
pretty clothes when she was a girl."
Then she looked again, and she wasn't so sure; in
fact, she hadn't at any time been perfectly sure about
Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet
her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into
things.
"This all you was to take in?" asked Mrs. Hale.
"No," said the sheriffs wife; "she said she wanted an
apron. Funny thing to want, " she ventured in her
nervous little way, "for there's not much to get you
dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to
make her feel more natural. If you're used to wearing
an apron--. She said they were in the bottom drawer
of this cupboard. Yes--here they are. And then her
little shawl that always hung on the stair door."
"Yes, Mrs. Hale?"
"Do you think she--did it?'
"Mr. Peters says--." Footsteps were heard in the room
above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in a
lowered voice: "Mr. Peters says--it looks bad for her.
Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he's
going to make fun of her saying she didn't--wake up."
For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, "Well,
I guess John Wright didn't wake up--when they was
slippin' that rope under his neck," she muttered.
"No, it's strange," breathed Mrs. Peters. "They think
it was such a--funny way to kill a man."
She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh, abruptly
stopped.
"That's just what Mr. Hale said," said Mrs. Hale, in a
resolutely natural voice. "There was a gun in the
house. He says that's what he can't understand."
"Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was
needed for the case was a motive. Something to show
anger--or sudden feeling."
'Well, I don't see any signs of anger around here,"
said Mrs. Hale, "I don't--" She stopped. It was as if
her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught
by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table.
Slowly she moved toward the table. One half of it
was wiped clean, the other half messy. Her eyes
made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of
sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun-and not finished.
After a moment she stepped back, and said, in that
manner of releasing herself:
45
"Wonder how they're finding things upstairs? I hope
she had it a little more red up up there. You know,"-she paused, and feeling gathered,--"it seems kind of
sneaking: locking her up in town and coming out
here to get her own house to turn against her!"
"But, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife, "the law is
the law."
"Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot
it?"
The sheriff threw up his hands.
"They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or
just knot it!"
"I s'pose 'tis," answered Mrs. Hale shortly.
There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming
of hands over the stove, and then the county attorney
said briskly:
She turned to the stove, saying something about that
fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it a
minute, and when she straightened up she said
aggressively:
"Well, let's go right out to the barn and get that
cleared up."
"The law is the law--and a bad stove is a bad stove.
How'd you like to cook on this?"--pointing with the
poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door
and started to express her opinion of the oven; but
she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of
what it would mean, year after year, to have that
stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster
trying to bake in that oven--and the thought of her
never going over to see Minnie Foster--.
She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: "A
person gets discouraged--and loses heart."
The sheriff's wife had looked from the stove to the
sink--to the pail of water which had been carried in
from outside. The two women stood there silent,
above them the footsteps of the men who were
looking for evidence against the woman who had
worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into
things, of seeing through a thing to something else,
was in the eyes of the sheriff's wife now. When Mrs.
Hale next spoke to her, it was gently:
"Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We'll not
feel them when we go out."
Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up
the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she
exclaimed, "Why, she was piecing a quilt," and held
up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.
"I don't see as there's anything so strange," Mrs. Hale
said resentfully, after the outside door had closed on
the three men--"our taking up our time with little
things while we're waiting for them to get the
evidence. I don't see as it's anything to laugh about."
"Of course they've got awful important things on
their minds," said the sheriff's wife apologetically.
They returned to an inspection of the block for the
quilt. Mrs. Hale was looking at the fine, even sewing,
and preoccupied with thoughts of the woman who
had done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff's
wife say, in a queer tone:
"Why, look at this one."
She turned to take the block held out to her.
"The sewing," said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way,
"All the rest of them have been so nice and even-but--this one. Why, it looks as if she didn't know
what she was about!"
Their eyes met--something flashed to life, passed
between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed
to pull away from each other. A moment Mrs. Hale
sat there, her hands folded over that sewing which
was so unlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had
pulled a knot and drawn the threads.
Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks on the table.
"Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?" asked the
sheriff's wife, startled.
"It's log-cabin pattern," she said, putting several of
them together, "Pretty, isn't it?"
"Just pulling out a stitch or two that's not sewed very
good," said Mrs. Hale mildly.
They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not
hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair door
opened Mrs. Hale was saying:
"I don't think we ought to touch things," Mrs. Peters
said, a little helplessly.
"I'll just finish up this end," answered Mrs. Hale, still
in that mild, matter-of-fact fashion.
46
She threaded a needle and started to replace bad
sewing with good. For a little while she sewed in
silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she heard:
"Mrs. Hale!"
"Yes, Mrs. Peters?"
'What do you suppose she was so--nervous about?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing a
thing not important enough to spend much time on. "I
don't know as she was--nervous. I sew awful queer
sometimes when I'm just tired."
She cut a thread, and out of the corner of her eye
looked up at Mrs. Peters. The small, lean face of the
sheriff's wife seemed to have tightened up. Her eyes
had that look of peering into something. But next
moment she moved, and said in her thin, indecisive
way:
'Well, I must get those clothes wrapped. They may be
through sooner than we think. I wonder where I could
find a piece of paper--and string."
"In that cupboard, maybe," suggested to Mrs. Hale,
after a glance around.
One piece of the crazy sewing remained unripped.
Mrs. Peter's back turned, Martha Hale now
scrutinized that piece, compared it with the dainty,
accurate sewing of the other blocks. The difference
was startling. Holding this block made her feel queer,
as if the distracted thoughts of the woman who had
perhaps turned to it to try and quiet herself were
communicating themselves to her.
Mrs. Peters' voice roused her.
"Here's a bird-cage," she said. "Did she have a bird,
Mrs. Hale?"
'Why, I don't know whether she did or not." She
turned to look at the cage Mrs. Peters was holding up.
"I've not been here in so long." She sighed. "There
was a man round last year selling canaries cheap--but
I don't know as she took one. Maybe she did. She
used to sing real pretty herself."
Mrs. Peters looked around the kitchen.
"Seems kind of funny to think of a bird here." She
half laughed--an attempt to put up a barrier. "But she
must have had one--or why would she have a cage? I
wonder what happened to it."
"I suppose maybe the cat got it," suggested Mrs.
Hale, resuming her sewing.
"No; she didn't have a cat. She's got that feeling some
people have about cats--being afraid of them. When
they brought her to our house yesterday, my cat got
in the room, and she was real upset and asked me to
take it out."
"My sister Bessie was like that," laughed Mrs. Hale.
The sheriff's wife did not reply. The silence made
Mrs. Hale turn round. Mrs. Peters was examining the
bird-cage.
"Look at this door," she said slowly. "It's broke. One
hinge has been pulled apart."
Mrs. Hale came nearer.
"Looks as if someone must have been--rough with
it."
Again their eyes met--startled, questioning,
apprehensive. For a moment neither spoke nor
stirred. Then Mrs. Hale, turning away, said
brusquely:
"If they're going to find any evidence, I wish they'd
be about it. I don't like this place."
"But I'm awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale."
Mrs. Peters put the bird-cage on the table and sat
down. "It would be lonesome for me--sitting here
alone."
"Yes, it would, wouldn't it?" agreed Mrs. Hale, a
certain determined naturalness in her voice. She had
picked up the sewing, but now it dropped in her lap,
and she murmured in a different voice: "But I tell you
what I do wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over
sometimes when she was here. I wish--I had."
"But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale. Your
house--and your children."
"I could've come," retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. "I
stayed away because it weren't cheerful--and that's
why I ought to have come. I"--she looked around-"I've never liked this place. Maybe because it's down
in a hollow and you don't see the road. I don't know
what it is, but it's a lonesome place, and always was. I
wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster
sometimes. I can see now--" She did not put it into
words.
47
"Well, you mustn't reproach yourself," counseled
Mrs. Peters. "Somehow, we just don't see how it is
with other folks till--something comes up."
"Not having children makes less work," mused Mrs.
Hale, after a silence, "but it makes a quiet house--and
Wright out to work all day--and no company when he
did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs.
Peters?"
"Not to know him. I've seen him in town. They say
he was a good man."
"Here's some red," said Mrs. Hale, bringing out a roll
of cloth. Underneath that was a box. "Here, maybe
her scissors are in here--and her things." She held it
up. "What a pretty box! I'll warrant that was
something she had a long time ago--when she was a
girl."
She held it in her hand a moment; then, with a little
sigh, opened it.
Instantly her hand went to her nose.
"Why--!"
"Yes--good," conceded John Wright's neighbor
grimly. "He didn't drink, and kept his word as well as
most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard
man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with
him--." She stopped, shivered a little. "Like a raw
wind that gets to the bone." Her eye fell upon the
cage on the table before her, and she added, almost
bitterly: "I should think she would've wanted a bird!"
Mrs. Peters drew nearer--then turned away.
"There's something wrapped up in this piece of silk,"
faltered Mrs. Hale.
"This isn't her scissors," said Mrs. Peters, in a
shrinking voice.
Suddenly she leaned forward, looking intently at the
cage. "But what do you s'pose went wrong with it?"
Her hand not steady, Mrs. Hale raised the piece of
silk. "Oh, Mrs. Peters!" she cried. "It's--"
"I don't know," returned Mrs. Peters; "unless it got
sick and died."
Mrs. Peters bent closer.
But after she said it she reached over and swung the
broken door. Both women watched it as if somehow
held by it.
"You didn't know--her?" Mrs. Hale asked, a gentler
note in her voice.
"It's the bird," she whispered.
"But, Mrs. Peters!" cried Mrs. Hale. "Look at it! Its
neck--look at its neck! It's all--other side to."
She held the box away from her.
The sheriff's wife again bent closer.
"Not till they brought her yesterday," said the
sheriff's wife.
"Somebody wrung its neck," said she, in a voice that
was slow and deep.
"She--come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird
herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and-fluttery. How--she--did--change."
And then again the eyes of the two women met--this
time clung together in a look of dawning
comprehension, of growing horror. Mrs. Peters
looked from the dead bird to the broken door of the
cage. Again their eyes met. And just then there was a
sound at the outside door. Mrs. Hale slipped the box
under the quilt pieces in the basket, and sank into the
chair before it. Mrs. Peters stood holding to the table.
The county attorney and the sheriff came in from
outside.
That held her for a long time. Finally, as if struck
with a happy thought and relieved to get back to
everyday things, she exclaimed:
"Tell you what, Mrs. Peters, why don't you take the
quilt in with you? It might take up her mind."
"Why, I think that's a real nice idea, Mrs. Hale,"
agreed the sheriff's wife, as if she too were glad to
come into the atmosphere of a simple kindness.
"There couldn't possibly be any objection to that,
could there? Now, just what will I take? I wonder if
her patches are in here--and her things?"
They turned to the sewing basket.
"Well, ladies," said the county attorney, as one
turning from serious things to little pleasantries,
"have you decided whether she was going to quilt it
or knot it?"
"We think," began the sheriff's wife in a flurried
voice, "that she was going to--knot it."
48
He was too preoccupied to notice the change that
came in her voice on that last.
thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too."
Her voice tightened.
"Well, that's very interesting, I'm sure," he said
tolerantly. He caught sight of the bird-cage.
Mrs. Peters moved uneasily.
"Of course we don't know who killed the bird."
"Has the bird flown?"
"I knew John Wright," was Mrs. Hale's answer.
"We think the cat got it," said Mrs. Hale in a voice
curiously even.
He was walking up and down, as if thinking
something out.
"It was an awful thing was done in this house that
night, Mrs. Hale," said the sheriff's wife. "Killing a
man while he slept--slipping a thing round his neck
that choked the life out of him."
"Is there a cat?" he asked absently.
Mrs. Hale's hand went out to the bird cage.
Mrs. Hale shot a look up at the sheriff's wife.
"We don't know who killed him," whispered Mrs.
Peters wildly. "We don't know."
"Well, not now," said Mrs. Peters. "They're
superstitious, you know; they Ieave."
She sank into her chair.
The county attorney did not heed her. "No sign at all
of anyone having come in from the outside," he said
to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted
conversation. "Their own rope. Now let's go upstairs
again and go over it, picee by piece. It would have to
have been someone who knew just the--"
The stair door closed behind them and their voices
were lost.
Mrs. Hale had not moved. "If there had been years
and years of--nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it
would be awful--still--after the bird was still."
It was as if something within her not herself had
spoken, and it found in Mrs. Peters something she did
not know as herself.
"I know what stillness is," she said, in a queer,
monotonous voice. "When we homesteaded in
Dakota, and my first baby died--after he was two
years old--and me with no other then--"
Mrs. Hale stirred.
The two women sat motionless, not looking at each
other, but as if peering into something and at the
same time holding back. When they spoke now it was
as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but
as if they could not help saying it.
"She liked the bird," said Martha Hale, low and
slowly. "She was going to bury it in that pretty box."
When I was a girl," said Mrs. Peters, under her
breath, "my kitten--there was a boy took a hatchet,
and before my eyes--before I could get there--" She
covered her face an instant. "If they hadn't held me
back I would have"--she caught herself, looked
upstairs where footsteps were heard, and finished
weakly--"hurt him."
"How soon do you suppose they'll be through looking
for the evidence?"
"I know what stillness is," repeated Mrs. Peters, in
just that same way. Then she too pulled back. "The
law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale," she said in
her tight little way.
"I wish you'd seen Minnie Foster," was the answer,
"when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and
stood up there in the choir and sang."
The picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived
neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her
die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could
bear.
Then they sat without speaking or moving.
"I wonder how it would seem," Mrs. Hale at last
began, as if feeling her way over strange ground-"never to have had any children around?" Her eyes
made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what
that kitchen had meant through all the years "No,
Wright wouldn't like the bird," she said after that--"a
"Oh, I wish I'd come over here once in a while!" she
cried. "That was a crime! Who's going to punish
that?"
"We mustn't take on," said Mrs. Peters, with a
frightened look toward the stairs.
49
"I might 'a' known she needed help! I tell you, it's
queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we
live far apart. We all go through the same things--it's
all just a different kind of the same thing! If it
weren't--why do you and I understand? Why do we
know--what we know this minute?"
She dashed her hand across her eyes. Then, seeing
the jar of fruit on the table she reached for it and
choked out:
to go over everything. I'm not satisfied we can't do
better."
Again, for one brief moment, the two women's eyes
found one another.
The sheriff came up to the table.
"Did you want to see what Mrs. Peters was going to
take in?"
"If I was you I wouldn't tell her her fruit was gone!
Tell her it ain't. Tell her it's all right--all of it. Here-take this in to prove it to her! She--she may never
know whether it was broke or not."
The county attorney picked up the apron. He laughed.
She turned away.
Mrs. Hale's hand was on the sewing basket in which
the box was concealed. She felt that she ought to take
her hand off the basket. She did not seem able to. He
picked up one of the quilt blocks which she had piled
on to cover the box. Her eyes felt like fire. She had a
feeling that if he took up the basket she would snatch
it from him.
Mrs. Peters reached out for the bottle of fruit as if she
were glad to take it--as if touching a familiar thing,
having something to do, could keep her from
something else. She got up, looked about for
something to wrap the fruit in, took a petticoat from
the pile of clothes she had brought from the front
room, and nervously started winding that round the
bottle.
"My!" she began, in a high, false voice, "it's a good
thing the men couldn't hear us! Getting all stirred up
over a little thing like a--dead canary." She hurried
over that. "As if that could have anything to do with-with--My, wouldn't they laugh?"
Footsteps were heard on the stairs.
"Maybe they would," muttered Mrs. Hale--"maybe
they wouldn't."
"No, Peters," said the county attorney incisively; "it's
all perfectly clear, except the reason for doing it. But
you know juries when it comes to women. If there
was some definite thing--something to show.
Something to make a story about. A thing that would
connect up with this clumsy way of doing it."
In a covert way Mrs. Hale looked at Mrs. Peters. Mrs.
Peters was looking at her. Quickly they looked away
from each other. The outer door opened and Mr. Hale
came in.
"I've got the team round now," he said. "Pretty cold
out there."
"I'm going to stay here awhile by myself," the county
attorney suddenly announced. "You can send Frank
out for me, can't you?" he asked the sheriff. "I want
"Oh, I guess they're not very dangerous things the
ladies have picked out."
But he did not take it up. With another little laugh, he
turned away, saying:
"No; Mrs. Peters doesn't need supervising. For that
matter, a sheriff's wife is married to the law. Ever
think of it that way, Mrs. Peters?"
Mrs. Peters was standing beside the table. Mrs. Hale
shot a look up at her; but she could not see her face.
Mrs. Peters had turned away. When she spoke, her
voice was muffled.
"Not--just that way," she said.
"Married to the law!" chuckled Mrs. Peters' husband.
He moved toward the door into the front room, and
said to the county attorney:
"I just want you to come in here a minute, George.
We ought to take a look at these windows."
"Oh--windows," said the county attorney scoffingly.
"We'll be right out, Mr. Hale," said the sheriff to the
farmer, who was still waiting by the door.
Hale went to look after the horses. The sheriff
followed the county attorney into the other room.
Again--for one final moment--the two women were
alone in that kitchen.
Martha Hale sprang up, her hands tight together,
looking at that other woman, with whom it rested. At
first she could not see her eyes, for the sheriff's wife
50
had not turned back since she turned away at that
suggestion of being married to the law. But now Mrs.
Hale made her turn back. Her eyes made her turn
back. Slowly, unwillingly, Mrs. Peters turned her
head until her eyes met the eyes of the other woman.
There was a moment when they held each other in a
steady, burning look in which there was no evasion
or flinching. Then Martha Hale's eyes pointed the
way to the basket in which was hidden the thing that
would make certain the conviction of the other
woman--that woman who was not there and yet who
had been there with them all through that hour.
For a moment Mrs. Peters did not move. And then
she did it. With a rush forward, she threw back the
quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put it in her
handbag. It was too big. Desperately she opened it,
started to take the bird out. But there she broke--she
could not touch the bird. She stood there helpless,
foolish.
There was the sound of a knob turning in the inner
door. Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff's
wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as
the sheriff and the county attorney came back into the
kitchen.
"Well, Henry," said the county attorney facetiously,
"at least we found out that she was not going to quilt
it. She was going to--what is it you call it, ladies?"
Mrs. Hale's hand was against the pocket of her coat.
"We call it--knot it, Mr. Henderson."
_______________________________________
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne.
De Béranger.
DURING THE WHOLE of a dull, dark, and
soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the
clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a
singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found
myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within
view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not
how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the
building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my
spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because
poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually
receives even the sternest natural images of the
desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before
me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon
the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank
sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed
trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can
compare to no earthly sensation more properly than
to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the
bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping
off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a
sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of
thought which no goading of the imagination could
torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I
paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in
the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a
mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the
shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt,
there are combinations of very simple natural objects
which have the power of thus affecting us, still the
analysis of this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a
mere different arrangement of the particulars of the
scene, of the details of the picture, would be
sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its
capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon
this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of
a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by
the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder
even more thrilling than before—upon the
remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge,
and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eyelike windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now
proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its
proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon
companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed
since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately
reached me in a distant part of the country—a letter
from him—which, in its wildly importunate nature,
had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The
MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer
spoke of acute bodily illness—of a mental disorder
which oppressed him—and of an earnest desire to see
me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend,
with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my
society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the
manner in which all this, and much more, was said—
it was the apparent heart that went with his request—
which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered
a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate
associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His
51
reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I
was a man-of-ware, however, that his very ancient
family had been noted, time out of mind, for a
peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself,
through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent
yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate
devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to
the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of
musical science. I had learned, too, the very
remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all
time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period,
any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire
family lay in the direct line of descent, and had
always, with very trifling and very temporary
variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered,
while running over in thought the perfect keeping of
the character of the premises with the accredited
character of the people, and while speculating upon
the possible influence which the one, in the long
lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the
other—it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral
issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission,
from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name,
which had, at length, so identified the two as to
merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and
equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher”—an
appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of
the peasantry who used it, both the family and the
family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat
childish experiment—that of looking down within the
tarn—had been to deepen the first singular
impression. There can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my
superstition—for why should I not so term it?—
served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I
have long known, is the paradoxical law of all
sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have
been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted
my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the
pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy—a
fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to
show the vivid force of the sensations which
oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination
as really to believe that about the whole mansion and
domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to
themselves and their immediate vicinity—an
atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of
heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed
trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a
pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly
discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a
dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the
building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an
excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had
been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole
exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the
eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary
dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;
and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency
between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this
there was much that reminded me of the specious
totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long
years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this
indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a
scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely
perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of
the building in front, made its way down the wall in a
zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to
the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I
entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of
stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my
progress to the studio of his master. Much that I
encountered on the way contributed, I know not how,
to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have
already spoken. While the objects around me—while
the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of
the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the
phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I
strode, were but matters to which, or to such as
which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—
while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar
was all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar
were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring
up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of
the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a
mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity.
He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The
valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the
presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and
lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed,
and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor
as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble
gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through
the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently
distinct the more prominent objects around the eye,
however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter
angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted
52
and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the
walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless,
antique, and tattered. Many books and musical
instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any
vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an
atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and
irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which
he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with
a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first
thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the
constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A
glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me
of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some
moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with
a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had
never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period,
as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I
could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan
being before me with the companion of my early
boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all
times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion;
an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond
comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but
of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate
Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual
in similar formations; a finely moulded chin,
speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of
moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness
and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate
expansion above the regions of the temple, made up
altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing
character of these features, and of the expression they
were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I
doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of
the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve,
above all things startled and even awed me. The
silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all
unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it
floated rather than fell about the face, I could not,
even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression
with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with
an incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon found
this to arise from a series of feeble and futile
struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an
excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his
letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits,
and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar
physical conformation and temperament. His action
was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied
rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal
spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of
energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried,
and hollow-sounding enunciation—that leaden, selfbalanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance,
which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of
his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of
his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he
expected me to afford him. He entered, at some
length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family
evil, and one for which he despaired to find a
remedy—a mere nervous affection, he immediately
added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It
displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations.
Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and
bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the
general manner of the narration had their weight. He
suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses;
the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could
wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of
all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by
even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds,
and these from stringed instruments, which did not
inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a
bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I must
perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not
otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the
future, not in themselves, but in their results. I
shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial,
incident, which may operate upon this intolerable
agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of
danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this
unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I feel that the
period will sooner or later arrive when I must
abandon life and reason together, in some struggle
with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken
and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his
mental condition. He was enchained by certain
superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling
which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he
had never ventured forth—in regard to an influence
whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too
shadowy here to be re-stated—an influence which
some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of
his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance,
he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the
physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim
tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that
much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him
53
could be traced to a more natural and far more
palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued
illness—indeed to the evidently approaching
dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister—his sole
companion for long years—his last and only relative
on earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness
which I can never forget, “would leave him (him the
hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of
the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for
so was she called) passed slowly through a remote
portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed
my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an
utter astonishment not unmingled with dread—and
yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings.
A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes
followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length,
closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and
eagerly the countenance of the brother—but he had
buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive
that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread
the emaciated fingers through which trickled many
passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the
skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual
wasting away of the person, and frequent although
transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she
had steadily borne up against the pressure of her
malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed;
but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at
night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating
power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse
I had obtained of her person would thus probably be
the last I should obtain—that the lady, at least while
living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned
by either Usher or myself: and during this period I
was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the
melancholy of my friend. We painted and read
together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild
improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a
closer and closer still intimacy admitted me more
unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more
bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at
cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an
inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all
objects of the moral and physical universe, in one
unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many
solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of
the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt
to convey an idea of the exact character of the
studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved
me, or led me the way. An excited and highly
distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over
all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in
my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in
mind a certain singular perversion and amplification
of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From
the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at
which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I
shuddered knowing not why;—from these paintings
(vivid as their images now are before me) I would in
vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion
which should lie within the compass of merely
written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed
attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal
was Roderick Usher. For me at least—in the
circumstances then surrounding me—there arose out
of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac
contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of
intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in
the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend,
partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction,
may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A
small picture presented the interior of an immensely
long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
smooth, white, and without interruption or device.
Certain accessory points of the design served well to
convey the idea that this excavation lay at an
exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No
outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent,
and no torch, or other artificial source of light was
discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled
throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and
inappropriate splendour.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the
auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable
to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of
stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the
guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the
fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid
facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted
for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as
well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not
unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed
verbal improvisations), the result of that intense
mental collectedness and concentration to which I
have previously alluded as observable only in
particular moments of the highest artificial
excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I
have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
54
forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in
the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied
that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of
his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which
were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly,
if not accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this
ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there
became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I
mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for
other men have thought thus,) as on account of the
pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion,
in its general form, was that of the sentience of all
vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and
trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the
kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express
the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I
have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the
home of his forefathers. The conditions of the
sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the
method of collocation of these stones—in the order
of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many
fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed
trees which stood around—above all, in the long
undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its
reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its
evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be
seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the
gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of
their own about the waters and the walls. The result
was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet
importunate and terrible influence which for
centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and
which made him what I now saw him—what he was.
Such opinions need no comment, and I will make
none.
Our books—the books which, for years, had formed
no small portion of the mental existence of the
invalid—were, as might be supposed, in strict
keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored
together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse
of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven
and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of
Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of
Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la
Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of
Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One
favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the
Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican
Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in
Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and
Ægipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for
55
hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the
perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in
quarto Gothic—the manual of a forgotten church—
the Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae
Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this
work, and of its probable influence upon the
hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed
me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he
stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a
fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of
the numerous vaults within the main walls of the
building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for
this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel
at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his
resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the
unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of
certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of
her medical men, and of the remote and exposed
situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not
deny that when I called to mind the sinister
countenance of the person whom I met upon the
staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had
no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the
arrangements for the temporary entombment. The
body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to
its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which
had been so long unopened that our torches, half
smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little
opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and
entirely without means of admission for light; lying,
at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of
the building in which was my own sleeping
apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote
feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjonkeep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for
powder, or some other highly combustible substance,
as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a
long archway through which we reached it, were
carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive
iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense
weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it
moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels
within this region of horror, we partially turned aside
the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon
the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between
the brother and sister now first arrested my attention;
and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts,
murmured out some few words from which I learned
that the deceased and himself had been twins, and
that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had
always existed between them. Our glances, however,
rested not long upon the dead—for we could not
regard her unawed. The disease which had thus
entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left,
as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical
character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the
bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering
smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We
replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having
secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil,
into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper
portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed,
an observable change came over the features of the
mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner
had vanished. His ordinary occupations were
neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to
chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step.
The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
possible, a more ghastly hue—but the luminousness
of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional
huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed,
when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was
labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge
which he struggled for the necessary courage. At
times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the
mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld
him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an
attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his
condition terrified—that it infected me. I felt
creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the
night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of
the lady Madeline within the don-jon, that I
experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
came not near my couch—while the hours waned and
waned away. I struggled to reason off the
nervousness which had dominion over me. I
endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I
felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the
gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and
tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the
breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro
upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the
decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless.
An irrepressible tremour gradually pervaded my
frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an
incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off
with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the
56
pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense
darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not
why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—
to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I
knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense
sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I
threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I
should sleep no more during the night), and
endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable
condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly
to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light
step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I
presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant
afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door,
and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as
usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a
species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently
restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air
appalled me—but anything was preferable to the
solitude which I had so long endured, and I even
welcomed his presence as a relief.
“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after
having stared about him for some moments in
silence—“you have not then seen it?—but, stay! you
shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded
his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and
threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted
us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet
sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its
terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently
collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the
wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which
hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house)
did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity
with which they flew careering from all points
against each other, without passing away into the
distance. I say that even their exceeding density did
not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no
glimpse of the moon or stars—nor was there any
flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces
of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all
terrestrial objects immediately around us, were
glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous
and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung
about and enshrouded the mansion.
“You must not—you shall not behold this!” said I,
shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle
violence, from the window to a seat. “These
appearances, which bewilder you, are merely
electrical phenomena not uncommon—or it may be
that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma
of the tarn. Let us close this casement;—the air is
chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of
your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall
listen;—and so we will pass away this terrible night
together.”
The antique volume which I had taken up was the
“Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had
called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in
earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and
unimaginative prolixity which could have had
interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my
friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at
hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac,
might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is
full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of
the folly which I should read. Could I have judged,
indeed, by the wild over-strained air of vivacity with
which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the
words of the tale, I might well have congratulated
myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story
where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought
in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of
the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the
narrative run thus:
“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty
heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of
the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken,
waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who,
in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but,
feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the
rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and,
with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of
the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling
there-with sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and
tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollowsounding wood alarumed and reverberated
throughout the forest.
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a
moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at
once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived
me)—it appeared to me that, from some very remote
portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to
my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity
of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one
certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound
which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It
57
was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had
arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the
sashes of the casements, and the ordinary
commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the
sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should
have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering
within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to
perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the
stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard
before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and
upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten—
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the
head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave
up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh,
and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close
his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of
it, the like whereof was never before heard.”
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling
of wild amazement—for there could be no doubt
whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear
(although from what direction it proceeded I found it
impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but
harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or
grating sound—the exact counterpart of what my
fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of
the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a
thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and
extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any
observation, the sensitive nervousness of my
companion. I was by no means certain that he had
noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a
strange alteration had, during the last few minutes,
taken place in his demeanour. From a position
fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his
chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his
features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he
were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped
upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep,
from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I
caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his
body, too, was at variance with this idea—for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant
and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all
this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which
thus proceeded:
“And now, the champion, having escaped from the
terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the
brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the
enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass
from out of the way before him, and approached
valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to
where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth
tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his
feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and
terrible ringing sound.”
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—
as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment,
fallen heavily upon a floor of silver became aware of
a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet
apparently muffled reverberation. Completely
unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured
rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were
bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole
countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I
placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile
quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a
low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if
unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over
him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his
words.
“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it.
Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours,
many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity
me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I
dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!
Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you
that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow
coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I
dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—
Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of
the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and
the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her
struggles within the coppered archway of the vault!
Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is
she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I
not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not
distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her
heart? Madman!” here he sprang furiously to his feet,
and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he
were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell you that
she now stands without the door!”
58
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there
had been found the potency of a spell—the huge
antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw
slowly back, upon the instant, ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then
without those doors there did stand the lofty and
enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.
There was blood upon her white robes, and the
evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion
of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained
trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,
then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward
upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and
now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a
corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled
aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I
found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly
there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to
see whence a gleam so unusual could we have issued;
for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind
me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and
blood-red moon which now shone vividly through
that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have
before spoken as extending from the roof of the
building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I
gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a
fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the
satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain
reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—
there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the
voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank
tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the “HOUSE OF USHER
_______________________________________
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale
For Children
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
On the third day of rain they had killed so many
crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his
drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea,
because the newborn child had a temperature all
night and they thought it was due to the stench. The
world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were
a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach,
which on March nights glimmered like powdered
light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish.
The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was
coming back to the house after throwing away the
crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was
moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He
had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a
very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in
spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn't get up,
impeded by his enormous wings.
Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get
Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on
the sick child, and he took her to the rear of the
courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a
mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There
were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and
very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition
of a drenched great-grandfather took away and sense
of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard
wings, dirty and half-plucked were forever entangled
in the mud. They looked at him so long and so
closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame
their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then
they dared speak to him, and he answered in an
incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice.
That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of
the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he
was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship
wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a
neighbor woman who knew everything about life and
death to see him, and all she needed was one look to
show them their mistake.
"He's an angel," she told them. "He must have
been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so
old that the rain knocked him down."
On the following day everyone knew that a
flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo's
house. Against the judgment of the wise neighbor
woman, for whom angels in those times were the
fugitive survivors of a spiritual conspiracy, they did
not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo
watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen,
armed with his bailiff's club, and before going to bed
he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up
with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle
of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and
Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time
afterward the child woke up without a fever and with
a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and
decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and
provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on
the high seas. But when they went out into the
courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the
whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop
having fun with the angel, without the slightest
reverence, tossing him things to eat through the
openings in the wire as if weren't a supernatural
creature but a circus animal.
Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o'clock,
alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers
less frivolous than those at dawn had already arrived
59
and they were making all kinds of conjectures
concerning the captive's future. The simplest among
them thought that he should be named mayor of the
world. Others of sterner mind felt that he should be
promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to
win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be
put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of
winged wise men who could take charge of the
universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a
priest, had been a robust woodcutter. Standing by the
wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and
asked them to open the door so that he could take a
close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a
huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens. He
was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the
sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers
that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the
impertinences of the world, he only lifted his
antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his
dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken
coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The
parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter
when he saw that he did not understand the language
of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he
noticed that seen close up he was much too human:
he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back
side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his
main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial
winds, and nothing about him measured up to the
proud dignity of angels. The he came out of the
chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the
curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He
reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of
making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the
unwary. He argued that if wings were not the
essential element in determining the different
between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less
so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he
promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the
latter would write his primate so that the latter would
write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final
verdict from the highest courts.
His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of
the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after
a few hours the courtyard had the bustle of a
marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed
bayonets to disperse the mob that was about to knock
the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from
sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the
idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents
admission to see the angel.
The curious came from far away. A traveling
carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed
over the crowd several times, but no one paid any
attention to him because his wings were not those of
an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most
unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of
health: a poor woman who since childhood has been
counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a
Portuguese man who couldn't sleep because the noise
of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up
at night to undo the things he had done while awake;
and many others with less serious ailments. In the
midst of that shipwreck disorder that made the earth
tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with
fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed
their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims
waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the
horizon.
The angel was the only one who took no part in
his own act. He spent his time trying to get
comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the
hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles
that had been placed along the wire. At first they tried
to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to
the wisdom of the wise neighbor woman, were the
food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down,
just as he turned down the papal lunches that the
pentinents brought him, and they never found out
whether it was because he was an angel or because he
was an old man that in the end ate nothing but
eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed
to be patience. Especially during the first days, when
the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar
parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the
cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective
parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones
at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him
standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing
him was when they burned his side with an iron for
branding steers, for he had been motionless for so
many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke
with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with
tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of
times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung
and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem
to be of this world. Although many thought that his
reaction had not been one of rage but of pain, from
then on they were careful not to annoy him, because
the majority understood that his passivity was not
that of a her taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in
repose.
Father Gonzaga held back the crowd's frivolity
with formulas of maidservant inspiration while
awaiting the arrival of a final judgment on the nature
of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no
sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out in
the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any
60
connection with Aramaic, how many times he could
fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a
Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might
have come and gone until the end of time if a
providential event had not put and end to the priest's
tribulations.
It so happened that during those days, among so
many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the
town the traveling show of the woman who had been
changed into a spider for having disobeyed her
parents. The admission to see her was not only less
than the admission to see the angel, but people were
permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her
absurd state and to examine her up and down so that
no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She
was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with
the head of a sad maiden. What was most
heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape
but the sincere affliction with which she recounted
the details of her misfortune. While still practically a
child she had sneaked out of her parents' house to go
to a dance, and while she was coming back through
the woods after having danced all night without
permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in tow
and through the crack came the lightning bolt of
brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only
nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable
souls chose to toss into her mouth. A spectacle like
that, full of so much human truth and with such a
fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even
trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned
to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles
attributed to the angel showed a certain mental
disorder, like the blind man who didn't recover his
sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who
didn't get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the
leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those
consolation miracles, which were more like mocking
fun, had already ruined the angel's reputation when
the woman who had been changed into a spider
finally crushed him completely. That was how Father
Gonzaga was cured forever of his insomnia and
Pelayo's courtyard went back to being as empty as
during the time it had rained for three days and crabs
walked through the bedrooms.
The owners of the house had no reason to
lament. With the money they saved they built a twostory mansion with balconies and gardens and high
netting so that crabs wouldn't get in during the
winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that
angels wouldn't get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit
warren close to town and have up his job as a bailiff
for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with
high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the
kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in
those times. The chicken coop was the only thing that
didn't receive any attention. If they washed it down
with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every
so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to
drive away the dungheap stench that still hung
everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new
house into an old one. At first, when the child learned
to walk, they were careful that he not get too close to
the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their
fears and got used to the smell, and before they child
got his second teeth he'd gone inside the chicken
coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The
angel was no less standoffish with him than with the
other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious
infamies with the patience of a dog who had no
illusions. They both came down with the chicken pox
at the same time. The doctor who took care of the
child couldn't resist the temptation to listen to the
angel's heart, and he found so much whistling in the
heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it
seemed impossible for him to be alive. What
surprised him most, however, was the logic of his
wings. They seemed so natural on that completely
human organism that he couldn't understand why
other men didn't have them too.
When the child began school it had been some
time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of
the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself
about here and there like a stray dying man. They
would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom
and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He
seemed to be in so many places at the same time that
they grew to think that he'd be duplicated, that he was
reproducing himself all through the house, and the
exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it
was awful living in that hell full of angels. He could
scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become
so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All
he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers.
Pelayo threw a blanket over him and extended him
the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only
then did they notice that he had a temperature at
night, and was delirious with the tongue twisters of
an old Norwegian. That was one of the few times
they became alarmed, for they thought he was going
to die and not even the wise neighbor woman had
been able to tell them what to do with dead angels.
And yet he not only survived his worst winter,
but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He
remained motionless for several days in the farthest
corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him,
and at the beginning of December some large, stiff
feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a
61
scarecrow, which looked more like another
misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known
the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful
that no one should notice them, that no one should
hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes sang under
the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some
bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed
to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen.
Then she went to the window and caught the angel in
his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that
his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch
and he was on the point of knocking the shed down
with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light
and couldn't get a grip on the air. But he did manage
to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for
herself and for him, when she watched him pass over
the last houses, holding himself up in some way with
the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept
watching him even when she was through cutting the
onions and she kept on watching until it was no
longer possible for her to see him, because then he
was no longer an annoyance in her life but an
imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.
"We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar
guns have come from Purdey's. We should have some
good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting."
"The best sport in the world," agreed Rainsford.
"For the hunter," amended Whitney. "Not for the
jaguar."
"Don't talk rot, Whitney," said Rainsford. "You're a
big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a
jaguar feels?"
"Perhaps the jaguar does," observed Whitney.
"Bah! They've no understanding."
"Even so, I rather think they understand one thing-fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death."
_______________________________________
"Nonsense," laughed Rainsford. "This hot weather is
making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is
made up of two classes--the hunters and the huntees.
Luckily, you and I are hunters. Do you think we've
passed that island yet?"
The Most Dangerous Game
"I can't tell in the dark. I hope so."
Richard Connell
"OFF THERE to the right--somewhere--is a large
island," said Whitney." It's rather a mystery--"
"Why? " asked Rainsford.
"The place has a reputation--a bad one."
"What island is it?" Rainsford asked.
"Cannibals?" suggested Rainsford.
"The old charts call it `Ship-Trap Island,"' Whitney
replied." A suggestive name, isn't it? Sailors have a
curious dread of the place. I don't know why. Some
superstition--"
"Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn't live in such a Godforsaken place. But it's gotten into sailor lore,
somehow. Didn't you notice that the crew's nerves
seemed a bit jumpy today?"
"Can't see it," remarked Rainsford, trying to peer
through the dank tropical night that was palpable as it
pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.
"They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even
Captain Nielsen--"
"You've good eyes," said Whitney, with a laugh," and
I've seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown
fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can't see
four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean
night."
"Nor four yards," admitted Rainsford. "Ugh! It's like
moist black velvet."
"It will be light enough in Rio," promised Whitney.
"Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who'd go
up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those
fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before.
All I could get out of him was `This place has an evil
name among seafaring men, sir.' Then he said to me,
very gravely, `Don't you feel anything?'--as if the air
about us was actually poisonous. Now, you mustn't
laugh when I tell you this--I did feel something like a
sudden chill.
"There was no breeze. The sea was as flat as a plateglass window. We were drawing near the island then.
What I felt was a--a mental chill; a sort of sudden
dread."
62
"Pure imagination," said Rainsford.
"One superstitious sailor can taint the whole ship's
company with his fear."
"Maybe. But sometimes I think sailors have an extra
sense that tells them when they are in danger.
Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing--with wave
lengths, just as sound and light have. An evil place
can, so to speak, broadcast vibrations of evil.
Anyhow, I'm glad we're getting out of this zone.
Well, I think I'll turn in now, Rainsford."
"I'm not sleepy," said Rainsford. "I'm going to smoke
another pipe up on the afterdeck."
but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A
certain coolheadedness had come to him; it was not
the first time he had been in a tight place. There was
a chance that his cries could be heard by someone
aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and
grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled
himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his
power. The lights of the yacht became faint and evervanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out entirely
by the night.
Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come
from the right, and doggedly he swam in that
direction, swimming with slow, deliberate strokes,
conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time
he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he
could do possibly a hundred more and then—
"Good night, then, Rainsford. See you at breakfast."
"Right. Good night, Whitney."
Rainsford heard a sound. It came out of the darkness,
a high screaming sound, the sound of an animal in an
extremity of anguish and terror.
There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat
there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove
the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish
and ripple of the wash of the propeller.
He did not recognize the animal that made the sound;
he did not try to; with fresh vitality he swam toward
the sound. He heard it again; then it was cut short by
another noise, crisp, staccato.
Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, indolently
puffed on his favorite brier. The sensuous drowsiness
of the night was on him." It's so dark," he thought,
"that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night
would be my eyelids--"
"Pistol shot," muttered Rainsford, swimming on.
Ten minutes of determined effort brought another
sound to his ears--the most welcome he had ever
heard--the muttering and growling of the sea
breaking on a rocky shore. He was almost on the
rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he
would have been shattered against them. With his
remaining strength he dragged himself from the
swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut up into
the opaqueness; he forced himself upward, hand over
hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place
at the top. Dense jungle came down to the very edge
of the cliffs. What perils that tangle of trees and
underbrush might hold for him did not concern
Rainsford just then. All he knew was that he was safe
from his enemy, the sea, and that utter weariness was
on him. He flung himself down at the jungle edge and
tumbled headlong into the deepest sleep of his life.
When he opened his eyes he knew from the position
of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had
given him new vigor; a sharp hunger was picking at
him. He looked about him, almost cheerfully.
An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he
heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could
not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and
again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had
fired a gun three times.
Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail,
mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from
which the reports had come, but it was like trying to
see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and
balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his
pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth.
He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his
lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost
his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the
blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea dosed over
his head.
He struggled up to the surface and tried to cry out,
but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in
the face and the salt water in his open mouth made
him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out with
strong strokes after the receding lights of the yacht,
"Where there are pistol shots, there are men. Where
there are men, there is food," he thought. But what
kind of men, he wondered, in so forbidding a place?
An unbroken front of snarled and ragged jungle
fringed the shore.
63
He saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web
of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the
shore, and Rainsford floundered along by the water.
Not far from where he landed, he stopped.
hand the man held a long-barreled revolver, and he
was pointing it straight at Rainsford's heart.
Out of the snarl of beard two small eyes regarded
Rainsford.
Some wounded thing--by the evidence, a large
animal--had thrashed about in the underbrush; the
jungle weeds were crushed down and the moss was
lacerated; one patch of weeds was stained crimson. A
small, glittering object not far away caught
Rainsford's eye and he picked it up. It was an empty
cartridge.
"Don't be alarmed," said Rainsford, with a smile
which he hoped was disarming. "I'm no robber. I fell
off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New
York City."
"A twenty-two," he remarked. "That's odd. It must
have been a fairly large animal too. The hunter had
his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It's
clear that the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first
three shots I heard was when the hunter flushed his
quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he
trailed it here and finished it."
He examined the ground closely and found what he
had hoped to find--the print of hunting boots. They
pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been
going. Eagerly he hurried along, now slipping on a
rotten log or a loose stone, but making headway;
night was beginning to settle down on the island.
Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle
when Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon
them as he turned a crook in the coast line; and his
first thought was that be had come upon a village, for
there were many lights. But as he forged along he
saw to his great astonishment that all the lights were
in one enormous building--a lofty structure with
pointed towers plunging upward into the gloom. His
eyes made out the shadowy outlines of a palatial
chateau; it was set on a high bluff, and on three sides
of it cliffs dived down to where the sea licked greedy
lips in the shadows.
"Mirage," thought Rainsford. But it was no mirage,
he found, when he opened the tall spiked iron gate.
The stone steps were real enough; the massive door
with a leering gargoyle for a knocker was real
enough; yet above it all hung an air of unreality.
He lifted the knocker, and it creaked up stiffly, as if it
had never before been used. He let it fall, and it
startled him with its booming loudness. He thought
he heard steps within; the door remained closed.
Again Rainsford lifted the heavy knocker, and let it
fall. The door opened then--opened as suddenly as if
it were on a spring--and Rainsford stood blinking in
the river of glaring gold light that poured out. The
first thing Rainsford's eyes discerned was the largest
man Rainsford had ever seen--a gigantic creature,
solidly made and black bearded to the waist. In his
The menacing look in the eyes did not change. The
revolver pointing as rigidly as if the giant were a
statue. He gave no sign that he understood
Rainsford's words, or that he had even heard them.
He was dressed in uniform--a black uniform trimmed
with gray astrakhan.
"I'm Sanger Rainsford of New York," Rainsford
began again. "I fell off a yacht. I am hungry."
The man's only answer was to raise with his thumb
the hammer of his revolver. Then Rainsford saw the
man's free hand go to his forehead in a military
salute, and he saw him click his heels together and
stand at attention. Another man was coming down the
broad marble steps, an erect, slender man in evening
clothes. He advanced to Rainsford and held out his
hand.
In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent that
gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said,
"It is a very great pleasure and honor to welcome Mr.
Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my
home."
Automatically Rainsford shook the man's hand.
"I've read your book about hunting snow leopards in
Tibet, you see," explained the man. "I am General
Zaroff."
Rainsford's first impression was that the man was
singularly handsome; his second was that there was
an original, almost bizarre quality about the general's
face. He was a tall man past middle age, for his hair
was a vivid white; but his thick eyebrows and pointed
military mustache were as black as the night from
which Rainsford had come. His eyes, too, were black
and very bright. He had high cheekbones, a sharpcut
nose, a spare, dark face--the face of a man used to
giving orders, the face of an aristocrat. Turning to the
giant in uniform, the general made a sign. The giant
put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.
"Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow," remarked the
general, "but he has the misfortune to be deaf and
dumb. A simple fellow, but, I'm afraid, like all his
race, a bit of a savage."
64
"Is he Russian?"
"He is a Cossack," said the general, and his smile
showed red lips and pointed teeth. "So am I."
"Come," he said, "we shouldn't be chatting here. We
can talk later. Now you want clothes, food, rest. You
shall have them. This is a most-restful spot."
Ivan had reappeared, and the general spoke to him
with lips that moved but gave forth no sound.
"Follow Ivan, if you please, Mr. Rainsford," said the
general. "I was about to have my dinner when you
came. I'll wait for you. You'll find that my clothes
will fit you, I think."
"Perhaps," said General Zaroff, "you were surprised
that I recognized your name. You see, I read all
books on hunting published in English, French, and
Russian. I have but one passion in my life, Mr.
Rainsford, and it is the hunt."
"You have some wonderful heads here," said
Rainsford as he ate a particularly well-cooked filet
mignon. " That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever
saw."
"Oh, that fellow. Yes, he was a monster."
"Did he charge you?"
"Hurled me against a tree," said the general.
"Fractured my skull. But I got the brute."
It was to a huge, beam-ceilinged bedroom with a
canopied bed big enough for six men that Rainsford
followed the silent giant. Ivan laid out an evening
suit, and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it
came from a London tailor who ordinarily cut and
sewed for none below the rank of duke.
The dining room to which Ivan conducted him was in
many ways remarkable. There was a medieval
magnificence about it; it suggested a baronial hall of
feudal times with its oaken panels, its high ceiling, its
vast refectory tables where twoscore men could sit
down to eat. About the hall were mounted heads of
many animals--lions, tigers, elephants, moose, bears;
larger or more perfect specimens Rainsford had never
seen. At the great table the general was sitting, alone.
"You'll have a cocktail, Mr. Rainsford," he suggested.
The cocktail was surpassingly good; and, Rainsford
noted, the table apointments were of the finest--the
linen, the crystal, the silver, the china.
They were eating borsch, the rich, red soup with
whipped cream so dear to Russian palates. Half
apologetically General Zaroff said, "We do our best
to preserve the amenities of civilization here. Please
forgive any lapses. We are well off the beaten track,
you know. Do you think the champagne has suffered
from its long ocean trip?"
"Not in the least," declared Rainsford. He was finding
the general a most thoughtful and affable host, a true
cosmopolite. But there was one small trait of .the
general's that made Rainsford uncomfortable.
Whenever he looked up from his plate he found the
general studying him, appraising him narrowly.
"I've always thought," said Rainsford, "that the Cape
buffalo is the most dangerous of all big game."
For a moment the general did not reply; he was
smiling his curious red-lipped smile. Then he said
slowly, "No. You are wrong, sir. The Cape buffalo is
not the most dangerous big game." He sipped his
wine. "Here in my preserve on this island," he said in
the same slow tone, "I hunt more dangerous game."
Rainsford expressed his surprise. "Is there big game
on this island?"
The general nodded. "The biggest."
"Really?"
"Oh, it isn't here naturally, of course. I have to stock
the island."
"What have you imported, general?" Rainsford asked.
"Tigers?"
The general smiled. "No," he said. "Hunting tigers
ceased to interest me some years ago. I exhausted
their possibilities, you see. No thrill left in tigers, no
real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford."
The general took from his pocket a gold cigarette
case and offered his guest a long black cigarette with
a silver tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like
incense.
"We will have some capital hunting, you and I," said
the general. "I shall be most glad to have your
society."
"But what game--" began Rainsford.
65
"I'll tell you," said the general. "You will be amused,
I know. I think I may say, in all modesty, that I have
done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation.
May I pour you another glass of port?"
"Thank you, general."
The general filled both glasses, and said, "God makes
some men poets. Some He makes kings, some
beggars. Me He made a hunter. My hand was made
for the trigger, my father said. He was a very rich
man with a quarter of a million acres in the Crimea,
and he was an ardent sportsman. When I was only
five years old he gave me a little gun, specially made
in Moscow for me, to shoot sparrows with. When I
shot some of his prize turkeys with it, he did not
punish me; he complimented me on my
marksmanship. I killed my first bear in the Caucasus
when I was ten. My whole life has been one
prolonged hunt. I went into the army--it was expected
of noblemen's sons--and for a time commanded a
division of Cossack cavalry, but my real interest was
always the hunt. I have hunted every kind of game in
every land. It would be impossible for me to tell you
how many animals I have killed."
"No doubt, General Zaroff."
"So," continued the general, "I asked myself why the
hunt no longer fascinated me. You are much younger
than I am, Mr. Rainsford, and have not hunted as
much, but you perhaps can guess the answer."
"What was it?"
"Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call
`a sporting proposition.' It had become too easy. I
always got my quarry. Always. There is no greater
bore than perfection."
The general lit a fresh cigarette.
"No animal had a chance with me any more. That is
no boast; it is a mathematical certainty. The animal
had nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no
match for reason. When I thought of this it was a
tragic moment for me, I can tell you."
Rainsford leaned across the table, absorbed in what
his host was saying.
"It came to me as an inspiration what I must do," the
general went on.
The general puffed at his cigarette.
"And that was?"
"After the debacle in Russia I left the country, for it
was imprudent for an officer of the Czar to stay there.
Many noble Russians lost everything. I, luckily, had
invested heavily in American securities, so I shall
never have to open a tearoom in Monte Carlo or drive
a taxi in Paris. Naturally, I continued to hunt-grizzliest in your Rockies, crocodiles in the Ganges,
rhinoceroses in East Africa. It was in Africa that the
Cape buffalo hit me and laid me up for six months.
As soon as I recovered I started for the Amazon to
hunt jaguars, for I had heard they were unusually
cunning. They weren't." The Cossack sighed. "They
were no match at all for a hunter with his wits about
him, and a high-powered rifle. I was bitterly
disappointed. I was lying in my tent with a splitting
headache one night when a terrible thought pushed its
way into my mind. Hunting was beginning to bore
me! And hunting, remember, had been my life. I have
heard that in America businessmen often go to pieces
when they give up the business that has been their
life."
"Yes, that's so," said Rainsford.
The general smiled. "I had no wish to go to pieces,"
he said. "I must do something. Now, mine is an
analytical mind, Mr. Rainsford. Doubtless that is why
I enjoy the problems of the chase."
The general smiled the quiet smile of one who has
faced an obstacle and surmounted it with success. "I
had to invent a new animal to hunt," he said.
"A new animal? You're joking." "Not at all," said the
general. "I never joke about hunting. I needed a new
animal. I found one. So I bought this island built this
house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect
for my purposes--there are jungles with a maze of
traits in them, hills, swamps--"
"But the animal, General Zaroff?"
"Oh," said the general, "it supplies me with the most
exciting hunting in the world. No other hunting
compares with it for an instant. Every day I hunt, and
I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with
which I can match my wits."
Rainsford's bewilderment showed in his face.
"I wanted the ideal animal to hunt," explained the
general. "So I said, `What are the attributes of an
ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must
have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able
to reason."'
"But no animal can reason," objected Rainsford.
66
"My dear fellow," said the general, "there is one that
can."
"But you can't mean--" gasped Rainsford.
"And why not?"
"I can't believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This
is a grisly joke."
"Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of
hunting."
"Hunting? Great Guns, General Zaroff, what you
speak of is murder."
The general laughed with entire good nature. He
regarded Rainsford quizzically. "I refuse to believe
that so modern and civilized a young man as you
seem to be harbors romantic ideas about the value of
human life. Surely your experiences in the war--"
"Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,"
finished Rainsford stiffly.
Laughter shook the general. "How extraordinarily
droll you are!" he said. "One does not expect
nowadays to find a young man of the educated class,
even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say
so, mid-Victorian point of view. It's like finding a
snuffbox in a limousine. Ah, well, doubtless you had
Puritan ancestors. So many Americans appear to have
had. I'll wager you'll forget your notions when you go
hunting with me. You've a genuine new thrill in store
for you, Mr. Rainsford."
"Thank you, I'm a hunter, not a murderer."
"Dear me," said the general, quite unruffled, "again
that unpleasant word. But I think I can show you that
your scruples are quite ill founded."
"Yes?"
"Life is for the strong, to be lived by the strong, and,
if needs be, taken by the strong. The weak of the
world were put here to give the strong pleasure. I am
strong. Why should I not use my gift? If I wish to
hunt, why should I not? I hunt the scum of the earth:
sailors from tramp ships--lassars, blacks, Chinese,
whites, mongrels--a thoroughbred horse or hound is
worth more than a score of them."
"But they are men," said Rainsford hotly.
"Precisely," said the general. "That is why I use them.
It gives me pleasure. They can reason, after a fashion.
So they are dangerous."
"But where do you get them?"
The general's left eyelid fluttered down in a wink.
"This island is called Ship Trap," he answered.
"Sometimes an angry god of the high seas sends them
to me. Sometimes, when Providence is not so kind, I
help Providence a bit. Come to the window with me."
Rainsford went to the window and looked out toward
the sea.
"Watch! Out there!" exclaimed the general, pointing
into the night. Rainsford's eyes saw only blackness,
and then, as the general pressed a button, far out to
sea Rainsford saw the flash of lights.
The general chuckled. "They indicate a channel," he
said, "where there's none; giant rocks with razor
edges crouch like a sea monster with wide-open jaws.
They can crush a ship as easily as I crush this nut."
He dropped a walnut on the hardwood floor and
brought his heel grinding down on it. "Oh, yes," he
said, casually, as if in answer to a question, "I have
electricity. We try to be civilized here."
"Civilized? And you shoot down men?"
A trace of anger was in the general's black eyes, but it
was there for but a second; and he said, in his most
pleasant manner, "Dear me, what a righteous young
man you are! I assure you I do not do the thing you
suggest. That would be barbarous. I treat these
visitors with every consideration. They get plenty of
good food and exercise. They get into splendid
physical condition. You shall see for yourself
tomorrow."
"What do you mean?"
"We'll visit my training school," smiled the general.
"It's in the cellar. I have about a dozen pupils down
there now. They're from the Spanish bark San Lucar
that had the bad luck to go on the rocks out there. A
very inferior lot, I regret to say. Poor specimens and
more accustomed to the deck than to the jungle." He
raised his hand, and Ivan, who served as waiter,
brought thick Turkish coffee. Rainsford, with an
effort, held his tongue in check.
"It's a game, you see," pursued the general blandly. "I
suggest to one of them that we go hunting. I give him
a supply of food and an excellent hunting knife. I
give him three hours' start. I am to follow, armed
only with a pistol of the smallest caliber and range. If
my quarry eludes me for three whole days, he wins
67
the game. If I find him "--the general smiled--" he
loses."
"Suppose he refuses to be hunted?"
"Oh," said the general, "I give him his option, of
course. He need not play that game if he doesn't wish
to. If he does not wish to hunt, I turn him over to
Ivan. Ivan once had the honor of serving as official
knouter to the Great White Czar, and he has his own
ideas of sport. Invariably, Mr. Rainsford, invariably
they choose the hunt."
"And if they win?"
The smile on the general's face widened. "To date I
have not lost," he said. Then he added, hastily: "I
don't wish you to think me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford.
Many of them afford only the most elementary sort of
problem. Occasionally I strike a tartar. One almost
did win. I eventually had to use the dogs."
"The dogs?"
The bed was good, and the pajamas of the softest
silk, and he was tired in every fiber of his being, but
nevertheless Rainsford could not quiet his brain with
the opiate of sleep. He lay, eyes wide open. Once he
thought he heard stealthy steps in the corridor outside
his room. He sought to throw open the door; it would
not open. He went to the window and looked out. His
room was high up in one of the towers. The lights of
the chateau were out now, and it was dark and silent;
but there was a fragment of sallow moon, and by its
wan light he could see, dimly, the courtyard. There,
weaving in and out in the pattern of shadow, were
black, noiseless forms; the hounds heard him at the
window and looked up, expectantly, with their green
eyes. Rainsford went back to the bed and lay down.
By many methods he tried to put himself to sleep. He
had achieved a doze when, just as morning began to
come, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report
of a pistol.
General Zaroff did not appear until luncheon. He was
dressed faultlessly in the tweeds of a country squire.
He was solicitous about the state of Rainsford's
health.
"This way, please. I'll show you."
The general steered Rainsford to a window. The
lights from the windows sent a flickering illumination
that made grotesque patterns on the courtyard below,
and Rainsford could see moving about there a dozen
or so huge black shapes; as they turned toward him,
their eyes glittered greenly.
"A rather good lot, I think," observed the general.
"They are let out at seven every night. If anyone
should try to get into my house--or out of it-something extremely regrettable would occur to
him." He hummed a snatch of song from the Folies
Bergere.
"And now," said the general, "I want to show you my
new collection of heads. Will you come with me to
the library?"
"I hope," said Rainsford, "that you will excuse me
tonight, General Zaroff. I'm really not feeling well."
"Ah, indeed?" the general inquired solicitously.
"Well, I suppose that's only natural, after your long
swim. You need a good, restful night's sleep.
Tomorrow you'll feel like a new man, I'll wager.
Then we'll hunt, eh? I've one rather promising
prospect--" Rainsford was hurrying from the room.
"Sorry you can't go with me tonight," called the
general. "I expect rather fair sport--a big, strong,
black. He looks resourceful--Well, good night, Mr.
Rainsford; I hope you have a good night's rest."
"As for me," sighed the general, "I do not feel so
well. I am worried, Mr. Rainsford. Last night I
detected traces of my old complaint."
To Rainsford's questioning glance the general said,
"Ennui. Boredom."
Then, taking a second helping of crêpes Suzette, the
general explained: "The hunting was not good last
night. The fellow lost his head. He made a straight
trail that offered no problems at all. That's the trouble
with these sailors; they have dull brains to begin
with, and they do not know how to get about in the
woods. They do excessively stupid and obvious
things. It's most annoying. Will you have another
glass of Chablis, Mr. Rainsford?"
"General," said Rainsford firmly, "I wish to leave this
island at once."
The general raised his thickets of eyebrows; he
seemed hurt. "But, my dear fellow," the general
protested, "you've only just come. You've had no
hunting--"
"I wish to go today," said Rainsford. He saw the dead
black eyes of the general on him, studying him.
General Zaroff's face suddenly brightened.
He filled Rainsford's glass with venerable Chablis
from a dusty bottle.
68
"Tonight," said the general, "we will hunt--you and
I."
Rainsford shook his head. "No, general," he said. "I
will not hunt."
The general shrugged his shoulders and delicately ate
a hothouse grape. "As you wish, my friend," he said.
"The choice rests entirely with you. But may I not
venture to suggest that you will find my idea of sport
more diverting than Ivan's?"
He nodded toward the corner to where the giant
stood, scowling, his thick arms crossed on his
hogshead of chest.
that Lazarus followed him. You can imagine my
feelings, Mr. Rainsford. I loved Lazarus; he was the
finest hound in my pack. Well, I must beg you to
excuse me now. I always' take a siesta after lunch.
You'll hardly have time for a nap, I fear. You'll want
to start, no doubt. I shall not follow till dusk. Hunting
at night is so much more exciting than by day, don't
you think? Au revoir, Mr. Rainsford, au revoir."
General Zaroff, with a deep, courtly bow, strolled
from the room.
From another door came Ivan. Under one arm he
carried khaki hunting clothes, a haversack of food, a
leather sheath containing a long-bladed hunting
knife; his right hand rested on a cocked revolver
thrust in the crimson sash about his waist.
"You don't mean--" cried Rainsford.
"My dear fellow," said the general, "have I not told
you I always mean what I say about hunting? This is
really an inspiration. I drink to a foeman worthy of
my steel--at last." The general raised his glass, but
Rainsford sat staring at him.
"You'll find this game worth playing," the general
said enthusiastically." Your brain against mine. Your
woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina
against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is not
without value, eh?"
"And if I win--" began Rainsford huskily.
"I'll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeat if I do not
find you by midnight of the third day," said General
Zaroff. "My sloop will place you on the mainland
near a town." The general read what Rainsford was
thinking.
"Oh, you can trust me," said the Cossack. "I will give
you my word as a gentleman and a sportsman. Of
course you, in turn, must agree to say nothing of your
visit here."
"I'll agree to nothing of the kind," said Rainsford.
"Oh," said the general, "in that case--But why discuss
that now? Three days hence we can discuss it over a
bottle of Veuve Cliquot, unless--"
The general sipped his wine.
Then a businesslike air animated him. "Ivan," he said
to Rainsford, "will supply you with hunting clothes,
food, a knife. I suggest you wear moccasins; they
leave a poorer trail. I suggest, too, that you avoid the
big swamp in the southeast corner of the island. We
call it Death Swamp. There's quicksand there. One
foolish fellow tried it. The deplorable part of it was
Rainsford had fought his way through the bush for
two hours. "I must keep my nerve. I must keep my
nerve," he said through tight teeth.
He had not been entirely clearheaded when the
chateau gates snapped shut behind him. His whole
idea at first was to put distance between himself and
General Zaroff; and, to this end, he had plunged
along, spurred on by the sharp rowers of something
very like panic. Now he had got a grip on himself,
had stopped, and was taking stock of himself and the
situation. He saw that straight flight was futile;
inevitably it would bring him face to face with the
sea. He was in a picture with a frame of water, and
his operations, clearly, must take place within that
frame.
"I'll give him a trail to follow," muttered Rainsford,
and he struck off from the rude path he had been
following into the trackless wilderness. He executed
a series of intricate loops; he doubled on his trail
again and again, recalling all the lore of the fox hunt,
and all the dodges of the fox. Night found him legweary, with hands and face lashed by the branches,
on a thickly wooded ridge. He knew it would be
insane to blunder on through the dark, even if he had
the strength. His need for rest was imperative and he
thought, "I have played the fox, now I must play the
cat of the fable." A big tree with a thick trunk and
outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to
leave not the slightest mark, he climbed up into the
crotch, and, stretching out on one of the broad limbs,
after a fashion, rested. Rest brought him new
confidence and almost a feeling of security. Even so
zealous a hunter as General Zaroff could not trace
him there, he told himself; only the devil himself
could follow that complicated trail through the jungle
after dark. But perhaps the general was a devil--
69
An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a
wounded snake and sleep did not visit Rainsford,
although the silence of a dead world was on the
jungle. Toward morning when a dingy gray was
varnishing the sky, the cry of some startled bird
focused Rainsford's attention in that direction.
Something was coming through the bush, coming
slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way
Rainsford had come. He flattened himself down on
the limb and, through a screen of leaves almost as
thick as tapestry, he watched. . . . That which was
approaching was a man.
It was General Zaroff. He made his way along with
his eyes fixed in utmost concentration on the ground
before him. He paused, almost beneath the tree,
dropped to his knees and studied the ground.
Rainsford's impulse was to hurl himself down like a
panther, but he saw that the general's right hand held
something metallic--a small automatic pistol.
The hunter shook his head several times, as if he
were puzzled. Then he straightened up and took from
his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent
incenselike smoke floated up to Rainsford's nostrils.
Rainsford held his breath. The general's eyes had left
the ground and were traveling inch by inch up the
tree. Rainsford froze there, every muscle tensed for a
spring. But the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped
before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay; a
smile spread over his brown face. Very deliberately
he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his
back on the tree and walked carelessly away, back
along the trail he had come. The swish of the
underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and
fainter.
The pent-up air burst hotly from Rainsford's lungs.
His first thought made him feel sick and numb. The
general could follow a trail through the woods at
night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he
must have uncanny powers; only by the merest
chance had the Cossack failed to see his quarry.
Rainsford's second thought was even more terrible. It
sent a shudder of cold horror through his whole
being. Why had the general smiled? Why had he
turned back?
Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason
told him was true, but the truth was as evident as the
sun that had by now pushed through the morning
mists. The general was playing with him! The general
was saving him for another day's sport! The Cossack
was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that
Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror.
"I will not lose my nerve. I will not."
He slid down from the tree, and struck off again into
the woods. His face was set and he forced the
machinery of his mind to function. Three hundred
yards from his hiding place he stopped where a huge
dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living
one. Throwing off his sack of food, Rainsford took
his knife from its sheath and began to work with all
his energy.
The job was finished at last, and he threw himself
down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did
not have to wait long. The cat was coming again to
play with the mouse.
Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound
came General Zaroff. Nothing escaped those
searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no
bent twig, no mark, no matter how faint, in the moss.
So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was
upon the thing Rainsford had made before he saw it.
His foot touched the protruding bough that was the
trigger. Even as he touched it, the general sensed his
danger and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But
he was not quite quick enough; the dead tree,
delicately adjusted to rest on the cut living one,
crashed down and struck the general a glancing blow
on the shoulder as it fell; but for his alertness, he
must have been smashed beneath it. He staggered,
but he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He
stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and
Rainsford, with fear again gripping his heart, heard
the general's mocking laugh ring through the jungle.
"Rainsford," called the general, "if you are within
sound of my voice, as I suppose you are, let me
congratulate you. Not many men know how to make
a Malay mancatcher. Luckily for me I, too, have
hunted in Malacca. You are proving interesting, Mr.
Rainsford. I am going now to have my wound
dressed; it's only a slight one. But I shall be back. I
shall be back."
When the general, nursing his bruised shoulder, had
gone, Rainsford took up his flight again. It was flight
now, a desperate, hopeless flight, that carried him on
for some hours. Dusk came, then darkness, and still
he pressed on. The ground grew softer under his
moccasins; the vegetation grew ranker, denser;
insects bit him savagely.
Then, as he stepped forward, his foot sank into the
ooze. He tried to wrench it back, but the muck sucked
viciously at his foot as if it were a giant leech. With a
violent effort, he tore his feet loose. He knew where
he was now. Death Swamp and its quicksand.
His hands were tight closed as if his nerve were
something tangible that someone in the darkness was
70
trying to tear from his grip. The softness of the earth
had given him an idea. He stepped back from the
quicksand a dozen feet or so and, like some huge
prehistoric beaver, he began to dig.
Rainsford had dug himself in in France when a
second's delay meant death. That had been a placid
pastime compared to his digging now. The pit grew
deeper; when it was above his shoulders, he climbed
out and from some hard saplings cut stakes and
sharpened them to a fine point. These stakes he
planted in the bottom of the pit with the points
sticking up. With flying fingers he wove a rough
carpet of weeds and branches and with it he covered
the mouth of the pit. Then, wet with sweat and aching
with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a
lightning-charred tree.
He knew his pursuer was coming; he heard the
padding sound of feet on the soft earth, and the night
breeze brought him the perfume of the general's
cigarette. It seemed to Rainsford that the general was
coming with unusual swiftness; he was not feeling
his way along, foot by foot. Rainsford, crouching
there, could not see the general, nor could he see the
pit. He lived a year in a minute. Then he felt an
impulse to cry aloud with joy, for he heard the sharp
crackle of the breaking branches as the cover of the
pit gave way; he heard the sharp scream of pain as
the pointed stakes found their mark. He leaped up
from his place of concealment. Then he cowered
back. Three feet from the pit a man was standing,
with an electric torch in his hand.
"You've done well, Rainsford," the voice of the
general called. "Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed
one of my best dogs. Again you score. I think, Mr.
Rainsford, Ill see what you can do against my whole
pack. I'm going home for a rest now. Thank you for a
most amusing evening."
At daybreak Rainsford, lying near the swamp, was
awakened by a sound that made him know that he
had new things to learn about fear. It was a distant
sound, faint and wavering, but he knew it. It was the
baying of a pack of hounds.
Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He
could stay where he was and wait. That was suicide.
He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable.
For a moment he stood there, thinking. An idea that
held a wild chance came to him, and, tightening his
belt, he headed away from the swamp.
The baying of the hounds drew nearer, then still
nearer, nearer, ever nearer. On a ridge Rainsford
climbed a tree. Down a watercourse, not a quarter of
a mile away, he could see the bush moving. Straining
his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff;
just ahead of him Rainsford made out another figure
whose wide shoulders surged through the tall jungle
weeds; it was the giant Ivan, and he seemed pulled
forward by some unseen force; Rainsford knew that
Ivan must be holding the pack in leash.
They would be on him any minute now. His mind
worked frantically. He thought of a native trick he
had learned in Uganda. He slid down the tree. He
caught hold of a springy young sapling and to it he
fastened his hunting knife, with the blade pointing
down the trail; with a bit of wild grapevine he tied
back the sapling. Then he ran for his life. The hounds
raised their voices as they hit the fresh scent.
Rainsford knew now how an animal at bay feels.
He had to stop to get his breath. The baying of the
hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford's heart
stopped too. They must have reached the knife.
He shinned excitedly up a tree and looked back. His
pursuers had stopped. But the hope that was in
Rainsford's brain when he climbed died, for he saw in
the shallow valley that General Zaroff was still on his
feet. But Ivan was not. The knife, driven by the recoil
of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.
Rainsford had hardly tumbled to the ground when the
pack took up the cry again.
"Nerve, nerve, nerve!" he panted, as he dashed along.
A blue gap showed between the trees dead ahead.
Ever nearer drew the hounds. Rainsford forced
himself on toward that gap. He reached it. It was the
shore of the sea. Across a cove he could see the
gloomy gray stone of the chateau. Twenty feet below
him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated.
He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the
sea. . . .
When the general and his pack reached the place by
the sea, the Cossack stopped. For some minutes he
stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. He
shrugged his shoulders. Then be sat down, took a
drink of brandy from a silver flask, lit a cigarette, and
hummed a bit from Madame Butterfly.
General Zaroff had an exceedingly good dinner in his
great paneled dining hall that evening. With it he had
a bottle of Pol Roger and half a bottle of Chambertin.
Two slight annoyances kept him from perfect
enjoyment. One was the thought that it would be
difficult to replace Ivan; the other was that his quarry
had escaped him; of course, the American hadn't
71
played the game--so thought the general as he tasted
his after-dinner liqueur. In his library he read, to
soothe himself, from the works of Marcus Aurelius.
At ten he went up to his bedroom. He was deliciously
tired, he said to himself, as he locked himself in.
There was a little moonlight, so, before turning on his
light, he went to the window and looked down at the
courtyard. He could see the great hounds, and he
called, "Better luck another time," to them. Then he
switched on the light.
the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane,
looked at each other and grinned. "The old man will
get us through" they said to one another. "The Old
Man ain't afraid of Hell!" . . .
"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs.
Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"
"Swam," said Rainsford. "I found it quicker than
walking through the jungle."
"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife,
in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment.
She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman
who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to
fifty-five," she said. "You know I don't like to go
more than forty. You were up to fifty-five." Walter
Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the
roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in
twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote,
intimate airways of his mind.
The general sucked in his breath and smiled. "I
congratulate you," he said. "You have won the
game."
"You're tensed up again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one
of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you
over."
Rainsford did not smile. "I am still a beast at bay," he
said, in a low, hoarse voice. "Get ready, General
Zaroff."
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the
building where his wife went to have her hair done.
"Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having
my hair done," she said. "I don't need overshoes,"
said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag.
A man, who had been hiding in the curtains of the
bed, was standing there.
"Rainsford!" screamed the general. "How in God's
name did you get here?"
The general made one of his deepest bows. "I see," he
said. "Splendid! One of us is to furnish a repast for
the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent
bed. On guard, Rainsford." . . .
He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.
_______________________________________
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty James Thurber
"We're going through!" The Commander's voice was
like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform,
with the heavily braided white cap pulled down
rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it,
sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm
not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the
Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up
to 8,500! We're going through!" The pounding of the
cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketapocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice
forming on the pilot window. He walked over and
twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8
auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!"
repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No. 3
turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength iNo.
3 turret!" The crew, bending to their various tasks in
"We've been all through that," she said, getting out of
the car. "You're not a young man any longer." He
raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your
gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty
reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He
put them on, but after she had turned and gone into
the building and he had driven on to a red light, he
took them off again. "Pick it up, brother!" snapped a
cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on
his gloves and lurched ahead. He drove around the
streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past
the hospital on his way to the parking lot.
. . . "It's the millionaire banker, Wellington
McMillan," said the pretty nurse. "Yes?" said Walter
Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "Who has the
case?" "Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow, but there are
two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York
and Mr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew
over." A door opened down a long, cool corridor and
Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and
haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. "We're having the
devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire
banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt.
Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd
72
take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered
introductions: "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Mr.
Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty." "I've read your book
on streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking
hands. "A brilliant performance, sir." "Thank you,"
said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you were in the
States, Mitty," grumbled Remington. "Coals to
Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a
tertiary." "You are very kind," said Mitty. A huge,
complicated machine, connected to the operating
table, with many tubes and wires, began at this
moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new
anesthetizer is giving way!" shouted an intern. "There
is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!"
"Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He
sprang to the machine, which was going pocketapocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering
delicately a row of glistening dials. "Give me a
fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone handed him a
fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the
machine and inserted the pen in its place. "That will
hold for ten minutes," he said. "Get on with the
operation." A nurse hurried over and whispered to
Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale.
"Coreopsis has set in," said Renshaw nervously. "If
you would take over, Mitty?" Mitty looked at him
and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and
at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great
specialists. "If you wish," he said. They slipped a
white gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on
thin gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .
"Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!" Walter
Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac,"
said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty
closely. "Gee. Yeh," muttered Mitty. He began
cautiously to back out of the lane marked "Exit
Only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll
put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better
leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the
ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the car,
backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it
belonged.
They're so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty,
walking along Main Street; they think they know
everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off,
outside New Milford, and he had got them wound
around the axles. A man had had to come out in a
wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning
garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him
drive to the garage to have the chains taken off. The
next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a
sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll have my right
arm in a sling and they'll see I couldn't possibly take
the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the
sidewalk. "Overshoes," he said to himself, and he
began looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again, with the
overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began
to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told
him to get. She had told him, twice, before they set
out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he
hated these weekly trips to town-he was always
getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought,
Squibb's, razor blades? No. Toothpaste, toothbrush,
bicarbonate, cardorundum, initiative and referendum?
He gave it up. But she would remember it. "Where's
the what's-its-name," she would ask. "Don't tell me
you forgot the what's-its-name." A newsboy went by
shouting something about the Waterbury trial.
. . . "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The
District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic
at the quiet figure on the witness stand. "Have you
ever seen this before?" Walter Mitty took the gun and
examined it expertly. "This is my Webley-Vickers
50.80," he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around
the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are
a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said
the District Attorney, insinuatingly. "Objection!"
shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the
defendant could not have fired the shot. We have
shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the
night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty raised
his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were
stilled. "With any known make of gun," he said
evenly, "I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at
three hundred feet with my left hand." Pandemonium
broke loose in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose
above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired
girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District Attorney
struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair,
Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin.
"You miserable cur!" . . .
"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He stopped
walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out
of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A
woman who was passing laughed. "He said 'Puppy
biscuit'," she said to her companion. "That man said
'Puppy biscuit' to himself." Walter Mitty hurried on.
He went into an A&P, not the first one he came to but
a smaller one farther up the street. "I want some
73
biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to the clerk.
"Any special brand, sir?" The greatest pistol shot in
the world thought a moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark
for It' on the box," said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser's in
fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking at his watch,
unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had
trouble drying it. She didn't like to get to the hotel
first; she would want him to be there waiting for her
as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby,
facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the
puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an
old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair.
"Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?"
Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing
planes and of ruined streets.
. . . "The cannonading has got the wind up in
young Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty
looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him to
bed," he said wearily. "With the others. I'll fly alone."
"But you can't, sir," said the sergeant anxiously. "It
takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies
are pounding hell out of the air. Von Richtman's
circus is between here and Saulier." "Somebody's got
to get that ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going
over. Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the
sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and
whined around the dugout and battered at the door.
There was a rending of wood and splinters flew
through the room. "A bit of a near thing," said
Captain Mitty carelessly. "The box barrage is closing
in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, Sergeant,"
said Mitty with his faint, fleeting smile. "Or do we?"
He poured another brandy and tossed it off. "I never
see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir," said
the sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain
Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge WebleyVickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers through hell,
sir," said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last brandy.
"After all," he said softly, "what isn't?" The pounding
of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting
of machine guns, and from somewhere came the
menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flamethrowers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the
dugout humming "AuprËs de Ma Blonde." He turned
and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he said. . .
Something struck his shoulder. "I've been looking
all over this hotel for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do
you have to hide in this old chair? How did you
expect me to find you?" "Things close in," said
Walter Mitty vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did
you get the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit?
What's in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty.
"Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" "I was
thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to
you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at
him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get
you home," she said.
They went out through the revolving doors that
made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you
pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At
the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for
me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was
more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette.
It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up
against the wall of the drugstore, smoking . . . He put
his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell
with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully.
He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it
away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing
about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and
motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the
Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
_______________________________________
A Sound of Thunder
Ray Bradbury
The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film
of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his eyelids blink
over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary
darkness:
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
YOU SHOOT IT.
Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels' throat; he
swallowed and pushed it down. The muscles around
his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly
out upon the air, and in that hand waved a check for
ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk.
"Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?"
"We guarantee nothing," said the official, "except the
dinosaurs." He turned. "This is Mr. Travis, your
Safari Guide in the Past. He'll tell you what and
where to shoot. If he says no shooting, no shooting. If
you disobey instructions, there's a stiff penalty of
another ten thousand dollars, plus possible
government action, on your return."
74
Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and
tangle, a snaking and humming of wires and steel
boxes, at an aurora that flickered now orange, now
silver, now blue. There was a sound like a gigantic
bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and all the
parchment calendars, all the hours piled high and set
aflame.
A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the
instant, beautifully reverse itself. Eckels remembered
the wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of
chars and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden
salamanders, the old years, the green years, might
leap; roses sweeten the air, white hair turn Irishblack, wrinkles vanish; all, everything fly back to
seed, flee death, rush down to their beginnings, suns
rise in western skies and set in glorious easts, moons
eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and
everything cupping one in another like Chinese
boxes, rabbits into hats, all and everything returning
to the fresh death, the seed death, the green death, to
the time before the beginning. A touch of a hand
might do it, the merest touch of a hand.
"Unbelievable." Eckels breathed, the light of the
Machine on his thin face. "A real Time Machine." He
shook his head. "Makes you think, If the election had
gone badly yesterday, I might be here now running
away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He'll
make a fine President of the United States."
"Yes," said the man behind the desk. "We're lucky. If
Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have the worst kind of
dictatorship. There's an anti everything man for you,
a militarist, anti-Christ, anti-human, anti-intellectual.
People called us up, you know, joking but not joking.
Said if Deutscher became President they wanted to
go live in 1492. Of course it's not our business to
conduct Escapes, but to form Safaris. Anyway,
Keith's President now. All you got to worry about is-"
"Shooting my dinosaur," Eckels finished it for him.
"A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most
incredible monster in history. Sign this release.
Anything happens to you, we're not responsible.
Those dinosaurs are hungry."
Eckels flushed angrily. "Trying to scare me!"
"Frankly, yes. We don't want anyone going who'll
panic at the first shot. Six Safari leaders were killed
last year, and a dozen hunters. We're here to give you
the severest thrill a real hunter ever asked for.
Traveling you back sixty million years to bag the
biggest game in all of Time. Your personal check's
still there. Tear it up."Mr. Eckels looked at the check.
His fingers twitched.
"Good luck," said the man behind the desk. "Mr.
Travis, he's all yours."
They moved silently across the room, taking their
guns with them, toward the Machine, toward the
silver metal and the roaring light.
First a day and then a night and then a day and then a
night, then it was day-night-day-night. A week, a
month, a year, a decade! A.D. 2055. A.D. 2019.
1999! 1957! Gone! The Machine roared.
They put on their oxygen helmets and tested the
intercoms.
Eckels swayed on the padded seat, his face pale, his
jaw stiff. He felt the trembling in his arms and he
looked down and found his hands tight on the new
rifle. There were four other men in the Machine.
Travis, the Safari Leader, his assistant, Lesperance,
and two other hunters, Billings and Kramer. They sat
looking at each other, and the years blazed around
them.
"Can these guns get a dinosaur cold?" Eckels felt his
mouth saying.
"If you hit them right," said Travis on the helmet
radio. "Some dinosaurs have two brains, one in the
head, another far down the spinal column. We stay
away from those. That's stretching luck. Put your first
two shots into the eyes, if you can, blind them, and
go back into the brain."
The Machine howled. Time was a film run backward.
Suns fled and ten million moons fled after them.
"Think," said Eckels. "Every hunter that ever lived
would envy us today. This makes Africa seem like
Illinois."
The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur.
The Machine stopped.
The sun stopped in the sky.
The fog that had enveloped the Machine blew away
and they were in an old time, a very old time indeed,
three hunters and two Safari Heads with their blue
metal guns across their knees.
"Christ isn't born yet," said Travis, "Moses has not
gone to the mountains to talk with God. The
Pyramids are still in the earth, waiting to be cut out
and put up. Remember that. Alexander, Caesar,
Napoleon, Hitler-none of them exists." The man
nodded.
75
"That" - Mr. Travis pointed - "is the jungle of sixty
million two thousand and fifty-five years before
President Keith."
He indicated a metal path that struck off into green
wilderness, over streaming swamp, among giant ferns
and palms.
"And that," he said, "is the Path, laid by Time Safari
for your use.
It floats six inches above the earth. Doesn't touch so
much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It's an antigravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from
touching this world of the past in any way. Stay on
the Path. Don't go off it. I repeat. Don't go off. For
any reason! If you fall off, there's a penalty. And
don't shoot any animal we don't okay."
"Why?" asked Eckels.
They sat in the ancient wilderness. Far birds' cries
blew on a wind, and the smell of tar and an old salt
sea, moist grasses, and flowers the color of blood.
"We don't want to change the Future. We don't
belong here in the Past. The government doesn't like
us here. We have to pay big graft to keep our
franchise. A Time Machine is finicky business. Not
knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a
small bird, a roach, a flower even, thus destroying an
important link in a growing species."
"That's not clear," said Eckels.
"All right," Travis continued, "say we accidentally
kill one mouse here. That means all the future
families of this one particular mouse are destroyed,
right?"
"Right"
"And all the families of the families of the families of
that one mouse! With a stamp of your foot, you
annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a
million, a billion possible mice!"
"So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?"
"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about
the foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want
of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion
starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects,
vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into
chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to
this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of
a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar
or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have
stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping
on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. And
the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable
man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins
would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one
hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization.
Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a
people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to
slaying some of Adam's grandchildren. The stomp of
your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake,
the effects of which could shake our earth and
destinies down through Time, to their very
foundations. With the death of that one caveman, a
billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb.
Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills. Perhaps
Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes
healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse and you crush
the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave your
print, like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen
Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not
cross the Delaware, there might never be a United
States at all. So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never
step off!"
"I see," said Eckels. "Then it wouldn't pay for us even
to touch the grass?"
"Correct. Crushing certain plants could add up
infinitesimally. A little error here would multiply in
sixty million years, all out of proportion. Of course
maybe our theory is wrong. Maybe Time can't be
changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed only in
little subtle ways. A dead mouse here makes an insect
imbalance there, a population disproportion later, a
bad harvest further on, a depression, mass starvation,
and finally, a change in social temperament in farflung countries. Something much more subtle, like
that. Perhaps only a soft breath, a whisper, a hair,
pollen on the air, such a slight, slight change that
unless you looked close you wouldn't see it. Who
knows? Who really can say he knows? We don't
know. We're guessing. But until we do know for
certain whether our messing around in Time can
make a big roar or a little rustle in history, we're
being careful. This Machine, this Path, your clothing
and bodies, were sterilized, as you know, before the
journey. We wear these oxygen helmets so we can't
introduce our bacteria into an ancient atmosphere."
"How do we know which animals to shoot?"
"They're marked with red paint," said Travis. "Today,
before our journey, we sent Lesperance here back
with the Machine. He came to this particular era and
followed certain animals."
76
"Studying them?"
"Right," said Lesperance. "I track them through their
entire existence, noting which of them lives longest.
Very few. How many times they mate. Not often.
Life's short, When I find one that's going to die when
a tree falls on him, or one that drowns in a tar pit, I
note the exact hour, minute, and second. I shoot a
paint bomb. It leaves a red patch on his side. We can't
miss it. Then I correlate our arrival in the Past so that
we meet the Monster not more than two minutes
before he would have died anyway. This way, we kill
only animals with no future, that are never going to
mate again. You see how careful we are?"
"But if you come back this morning in Time," said
Eckels eagerly, you must've bumped into us, our
Safari! How did it turn out? Was it successful? Did
all of us get through-alive?"
Lesperance checked his wristwatch. "Up ahead, We'll
bisect his trail in sixty seconds. Look for the red
paint! Don't shoot till we give the word. Stay on the
Path. Stay on the Path!"
They moved forward in the wind of morning.
"Strange," murmured Eckels. "Up ahead, sixty
million years, Election Day over. Keith made
President. Everyone celebrating. And here we are, a
million years lost, and they don't exist. The things we
worried about for months, a lifetime, not even born or
thought of yet."
"Safety catches off, everyone!" ordered Travis. "You,
first shot, Eckels. Second, Billings, Third, Kramer."
"I've hunted tiger, wild boar, buffalo, elephant, but
now, this is it," said Eckels. "I'm shaking like a kid."
"Ah," said Travis.
Travis and Lesperance gave each other a look.
Everyone stopped.
"That'd be a paradox," said the latter. "Time doesn't
permit that sort of mess-a man meeting himself.
When such occasions threaten, Time steps aside. Like
an airplane hitting an air pocket. You felt the
Machine jump just before we stopped? That was us
passing ourselves on the way back to the Future. We
saw nothing. There's no way of telling if this
expedition was a success, if we got our monster, or
whether all of us - meaning you, Mr. Eckels - got out
alive."
Travis raised his hand. "Ahead," he whispered. "In
the mist. There he is. There's His Royal Majesty
now."
The jungle was wide and full of twitterings, rustlings,
murmurs, and sighs.
Suddenly it all ceased, as if someone had shut a door.
Silence.
Eckels smiled palely.
A sound of thunder.
"Cut that," said Travis sharply. "Everyone on his
feet!"
Out of the mist, one hundred yards away, came
Tyrannosaurus Rex.
They were ready to leave the Machine.
"It," whispered Eckels. "It......
The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the
jungle was the entire world forever and forever.
Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled
the sky, and those were pterodactyls soaring with
cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and
night fever.
Eckels, balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle
playfully.
"Stop that!" said Travis. "Don't even aim for fun,
blast you! If your guns should go off - - "
Eckels flushed. "Where's our Tyrannosaurus?"
"Sh!"
It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It
towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil
god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to
its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a
thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes
of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin
like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a
ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the
great breathing cage of the upper body those two
delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands
which might pick up and examine men like toys,
while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a
ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its
77
mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers.
Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression
save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It
ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes,
its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints six
inches deep wherever it settled its weight.
It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and
balanced for its ten tons. It moved into a sunlit area
warily, its beautifully reptilian hands feeling the air.
"Why, why," Eckels twitched his mouth. "It could
reach up and grab the moon."
"Sh!" Travis jerked angrily. "He hasn't seen us yet."
"It can't be killed," Eckels pronounced this verdict
quietly, as if there could be no argument. He had
weighed the evidence and this was his considered
opinion. The rifle in his hands seemed a cap gun.
"We were fools to come. This is impossible."
"Shut up!" hissed Travis.
"Nightmare."
"Turn around," commanded Travis. "Walk quietly to
the Machine. We'll remit half your fee."
"I didn't realize it would be this big," said Eckels. "I
miscalculated, that's all. And now I want out."
"It sees us!"
"There's the red paint on its chest!"
The Tyrant Lizard raised itself. Its armored flesh
glittered like a thousand green coins. The coins,
crusted with slime, steamed. In the slime, tiny insects
wriggled, so that the entire body seemed to twitch
and undulate, even while the monster itself did not
move. It exhaled. The stink of raw flesh blew down
the wilderness.
"Get me out of here," said Eckels. "It was never like
this before. I was always sure I'd come through alive.
I had good guides, good safaris, and safety. This
time, I figured wrong. I've met my match and admit
it. This is too much for me to get hold of."
"Don't run," said Lesperance. "Turn around. Hide in
the Machine."
"Yes." Eckels seemed to be numb. He looked at his
feet as if trying to make them move. He gave a grunt
of helplessness.
"Eckels!"
He took a few steps, blinking, shuffling.
"Not that way!"
The Monster, at the first motion, lunged forward with
a terrible scream. It covered one hundred yards in six
seconds. The rifles jerked up and blazed fire. A
windstorm from the beast's mouth engulfed them in
the stench of slime and old blood. The Monster
roared, teeth glittering with sun.
The rifles cracked again, Their sound was lost in
shriek and lizard thunder. The great level of the
reptile's tail swung up, lashed sideways. Trees
exploded in clouds of leaf and branch. The Monster
twitched its jeweler's hands down to fondle at the
men, to twist them in half, to crush them like berries,
to cram them into its teeth and its screaming throat.
Its boulderstone eyes leveled with the men. They saw
themselves mirrored. They fired at the metallic
eyelids and the blazing black iris,
Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche,
Tyrannosaurus fell.
Thundering, it clutched trees, pulled them with it. It
wrenched and tore the metal Path. The men flung
themselves back and away. The body hit, ten tons of
cold flesh and stone. The guns fired. The Monster
lashed its armored tail, twitched its snake jaws, and
lay still. A fount of blood spurted from its throat.
Somewhere inside, a sac of fluids burst. Sickening
gushes drenched the hunters. They stood, red and
glistening.
The thunder faded.
The jungle was silent. After the avalanche, a green
peace. After the nightmare, morning.
Billings and Kramer sat on the pathway and threw
up. Travis and Lesperance stood with smoking rifles,
cursing steadily. In the Time Machine, on his face,
Eckels lay shivering. He had found his way back to
the Path, climbed into the Machine.
Travis came walking, glanced at Eckels, took cotton
gauze from a metal box, and returned to the others,
who were sitting on the Path.
"Clean up."
They wiped the blood from their helmets. They began
to curse too. The Monster lay, a hill of solid flesh.
Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the
furthest chambers of it died, the organs
78
malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from
pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off,
closing up forever. It was like standing by a wrecked
locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all
valves being released or levered tight. Bones cracked;
the tonnage of its own flesh, off balance, dead
weight, snapped the delicate forearms, caught
underneath. The meat settled, quivering.
Another cracking sound. Overhead, a gigantic tree
branch broke from its heavy mooring, fell. It crashed
upon the dead beast with finality.
"There." Lesperance checked his watch. "Right on
time. That's the giant tree that was scheduled to fall
and kill this animal originally." He glanced at the two
hunters. "You want the trophy picture?"
"What?"
"We can't take a trophy back to the Future. The body
has to stay right here where it would have died
originally, so the insects, birds, and bacteria can get
at it, as they were intended to. Everything in balance.
The body stays. But we can take a picture of you
standing near it."
The two men tried to think, but gave up, shaking their
heads.
They let themselves be led along the metal Path.
They sank wearily into the Machine cushions. They
gazed back at the ruined Monster, the stagnating
mound, where already strange reptilian birds and
golden insects were busy at the steaming armor. A
sound on the floor of the Time Machine stiffened
them. Eckels sat there, shivering.
"I'm sorry," he said at last.
government. They might revoke our license to travel.
Who knows what he's done to Time, to History!"
"Take it easy, all he did was kick up some dirt."
"How do we know?" cried Travis. "We don't know
anything! It's all a mystery! Get out of here, Eckels!"
Eckels fumbled his shirt. "I'll pay anything. A
hundred thousand dollars!"
Travis glared at Eckels' checkbook and spat. "Go out
there. The Monster's next to the Path. Stick your arms
up to your elbows in his mouth. Then you can come
back with us."
"That's unreasonable!"
"The Monster's dead, you idiot. The bullets! The
bullets can't be left behind. They don't belong in the
Past; they might change anything. Here's my knife.
Dig them out!"
The jungle was alive again, full of the old tremorings
and bird cries. Eckels turned slowly to regard the
primeval garbage dump, that hill of nightmares and
terror. After a long time, like a sleepwalker he
shuffled out along the Path.
He returned, shuddering, five minutes later, his arms
soaked and red to the elbows. He held out his hands.
Each held a number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He
lay where he fell, not moving.
"You didn't have to make him do that," said
Lesperance.
"Didn't I? It's too early to tell." Travis nudged the still
body. "He'll live. Next time he won't go hunting
game like this. Okay." He jerked his thumb wearily at
Lesperance. "Switch on. Let's go home."
"Get up!" cried Travis.
1492. 1776. 1812.
Eckels got up.
"Go out on that Path alone," said Travis. He had his
rifle pointed, "You're not coming back in the
Machine. We're leaving you here!"
Lesperance seized Travis's arm. "Wait-"
"Stay out of this!" Travis shook his hand away. "This
fool nearly killed us. But it isn't that so much, no. It's
his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. That
ruins us! We'll forfeit! Thousands of dollars of
insurance! We guarantee no one leaves the Path. He
left it. Oh, the fool! I'll have to report to the
They cleaned their hands and faces. They changed
their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was up and
around again, not speaking. Travis glared at him for a
full ten minutes.
"Don't look at me," cried Eckels. "I haven't done
anything."
"Who can tell?"
"Just ran off the Path, that's all, a little mud on my
shoes-what do you want me to do-get down and
pray?"
79
"We might need it. I'm warning you, Eckels, I might
kill you yet. I've got my gun ready."
"I'm innocent. I've done nothing!"
1999.2000.2055.
The Machine stopped.
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled
crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a
clod of dirt, trembling, "No, it can't be. Not a little
thing like that. No!"
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and
black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.
"Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried
Eckels.
"Get out," said Travis.
The room was there as they had left it. But not the
same as they had left it. The same man sat behind the
same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind
the same desk. Travis looked around swiftly.
"Everything okay here?" he snapped.
"Fine. Welcome home!"
Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking
through the one high window.
"Okay, Eckels, get out. Don't ever come back."
Eckels could not move.
"You heard me," said Travis. "What're you staring
at?"
Eckels stood smelling of the air, and there was a
thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight,
that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned
him it was there. The colors, white, gray, blue,
orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond
the window, were . . . were . . . . And there was a feel.
His flesh twitched. His hands twitched. He stood
drinking the oddness with the pores of his body.
Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one
of those whistles that only a dog can hear. His body
screamed silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond
this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the
same man seated at this desk that was not quite the
same desk . . . lay an entire world of streets and
people. What sort of world it was now, there was no
telling. He could feel them moving there, beyond the
walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a
dry wind ....
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the
office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today
on first entering. Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing
that could upset balances and knock down a line of
small dominoes and then big dominoes and then
gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time.
Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things.
Killing one butterfly couldn't be that important!
Could it?
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: "Who
- who won the presidential election yesterday?"
The man behind the desk laughed. "You joking? You
know very well. Deutscher, of course! Who else? Not
that fool weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a
man with guts!" The official stopped. "What's
wrong?"
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He
scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking
fingers. "Can't we," he pleaded to the world, to
himself, to the officials, to the Machine, "can't we
take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we
start over? Can't we-"
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He
heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard
Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise
the weapon.
There was a sound of thunder.
Ray Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder," in R is for
Rocket, (New York: Doubleday, 1952)
_______________________________________
The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe
True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had
been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed
--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing
acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the
earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I
mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how
calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my
brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and
80
night. Object there was none. Passion there was none.
I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He
had never given me insult. For his gold I had no
desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had
the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over
it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and
so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind
to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of
the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen
know nothing. But you should have seen me. You
should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what
caution --with what foresight --with what
dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to
the old man than during the whole week before I
killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned
the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently!
And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for
my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed,
that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head.
Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I
thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so
that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took
me an hour to place my whole head within the
opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his
bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this,
And then, when my head was well in the room, I
undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously -cautiously (for the hinges creaked) --I undid it just so
much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.
And this I did for seven long nights --every night just
at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and
so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the
old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every
morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the
chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him
by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has
passed the night. So you see he would have been a
very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every
night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he
slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually
cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand
moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that
night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my
sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of
triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door,
little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret
deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and
perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed
suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I
drew back --but no. His room was as black as pitch
with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close
fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that
he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept
pushing it on steadily, steadily. I had my head in, and
was about to open the lantern, when my thumb
slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man
sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" I kept
quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did
not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not
hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed
listening; --just as I have done, night after night,
hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the
groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of
grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that
arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged
with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just
at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up
from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful
echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it
well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him,
although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been
lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he
had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since
growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them
causeless, but could not. He had been saying to
himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney -it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely
a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had
been trying to comfort himself with these
suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain;
because Death, in approaching him had stalked with
his black shadow before him, and enveloped the
victim. And it was the mournful influence of the
unperceived shadow that caused him to feel -although he neither saw nor heard --to feel the
presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently,
without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a
little --a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I
opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily,
stealthily --until, at length a simple dim ray, like the
thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell
full upon the vulture eye. It was open --wide, wide
open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it
with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a
hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in
my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old
man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if
by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. And
have I not told you that what you mistake for
madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I
say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound,
such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I
knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the
81
old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating
of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely
breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how
steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve.
Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It
grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder
every instant. The old man's terror must have been
extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!
--do you mark me well I have told you that I am
nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the
night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so
strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable
terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and
stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I
thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety
seized me --the sound would be heard by a
neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a
loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the
room. He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I
dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed
over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far
done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a
muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it
would not be heard through the wall. At length it
ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed
and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone
dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it
there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was
stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer
when I describe the wise precautions I took for the
concealment of the body. The night waned, and I
worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I
dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the
arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from
the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all
between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so
cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even
his --could have detected any thing wrong. There was
nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no bloodspot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub
had caught all --ha! ha! When I had made an end of
these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as
midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a
knocking at the street door. I went down to open it
with a light heart, --for what had I now to fear? There
entered three men, who introduced themselves, with
perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had
been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion
of foul play had been aroused; information had been
lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had
been deputed to search the premises. I smiled, --for
what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome.
The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old
man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took
my visitors all over the house. I bade them search -search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I
showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In
the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs
into the room, and desired them here to rest from
their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of
my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the
very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the
victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had
convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat,
and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of
familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting
pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I
fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still
chatted. The ringing became more distinct: --It
continued and became more distinct: I talked more
freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and
gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the
noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew
very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a
heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what
could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much
such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in
cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers
heard it not. I talked more quickly --more
vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose
and argued about trifles, in a high key and with
violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily
increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the
floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to
fury by the observations of the men --but the noise
steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I
foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon
which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the
boards, but the noise arose over all and continually
increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still
the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it
possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no!
They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they
were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought,
and this I think. But anything was better than this
agony! Anything was more tolerable than this
derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no
longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now -again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit
the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the
beating of his hideous heart!"
_______________________________________
82
The Snows of Kilimanjaro Ernest Hemingway
THE MARVELLOUS THING IS THAT IT’S
painless," he said. "That's how you know when it
starts."
"Is it really?"
"Absolutely. I'm awfully sorry about the odor though.
That must bother you."
"Don't! Please don't."
"Look at them," he said. "Now is it sight or is it scent
that brings them like that?"
"I don't quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let's not
quarrel any more. No matter how nervous we get.
Maybe they will be back with another truck today.
Maybe the plane will come."
"I don't want to move," the man said. "There is no
sense in moving now except to make it easier for
you."
"That's cowardly."
"Can't you let a man die as comfortably as he can
without calling him names? What's the use of
clanging me?"
"You're not going to die."
The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a
mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade onto
the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds
squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more
sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they
passed.
"They've been there since the day the truck broke
down," he said. "Today's the first time any have lit on
the ground. I watched the way they sailed very
carefully at first in case I ever wanted to use them in
a story. That's funny now.""I wish you wouldn't," she
said.
"I'm only talking," he said. "It's much easier if I talk.
But I don't want to bother you."
"Don't be silly. I'm dying now. Ask those bastards."
He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds sat,
their naked heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A
fourth planed down, to run quick-legged and then
waddle slowly toward the others.
"They are around every camp. You never notice
them. You can't die if you don't give up."
"Where did you read that? You're such a bloody
fool."
"You might think about some one else."
"For Christ's sake," he said, "that's been my trade."
"You know it doesn't bother me," she said. "It's that
I've gotten so very nervous not being able to do
anything. I think we might make it as easy as we can
until the plane comes."
"Or until the plane doesn't come."
"Please tell me what I can do. There must be
something I can do.
"You can take the leg off and that might stop it,
though I doubt it. Or you can shoot me. You're a
good shot now. I taught you to shoot, didn't I?"
He lay then and was quiet for a while and looked
across the heat shimmer of the plain to the edge of
the bush. There were a few Tommies that showed
minute and white against the yellow and, far off, he
saw a herd of zebra, white against the green of the
bush. This was a pleasant camp under big trees
against a hill, with good water, and close by, a nearly
dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in the
mornings.
"Wouldn't you like me to read?" she asked. She was
sitting on a canvas chair beside his cot. "There's a
breeze coming up.
"Please don't talk that way. Couldn't I read to you?"
"No thanks."
"Read what?"
"Maybe the truck will come."
"Anything in the book that we haven't read."
"I don't give a damn about the truck."
"I can't listen to it," he said." Talking is the easiest.
We quarrel and that makes the time pass."
"I do."
83
"You give a damn about so many things that I don't."
you wanted to go and I've done what you wanted to
do But I wish we'd never come here."
"Not so many, Harry."
"You said you loved it."
"What about a drink?"
"It's supposed to be bad for you. It said in Black's to
avoid all alcohol.You shouldn't drink."
"Molo!" he shouted.
"Yes Bwana."
"Bring whiskey-soda."
"Yes Bwana."
"You shouldn't," she said. "That's what I mean by
giving up. It says it's bad for you. I know it's bad for
you."
"No," he said. "It's good for me."
So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would
never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way
it ended, in a bickering over a drink. Since the
gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and
with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now
was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end
of it. For this, that now was coming, he had very little
curiosity.
For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant
nothing in itself. It was strange how easy being tired
enough made it.Now he would never write the things
that he had saved to write until he knew enough to
write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at
trying to write them either. Maybe you could never
write them, and that was why you put them off and
delayed the starting. Well he would never know,
now.
"I wish we'd never come," the woman said. She was
looking at him holding the glass and biting her lip.
"You never would have gotten anything like this in
Paris. You always said you loved Paris. We could
have stayed in Paris or gone anywhere. I'd have gone
anywhere. I said I'd go anywhere you wanted. If you
wanted to shoot we could have gone shooting in
Hungary and been comfortable."
"Your bloody money," he said.
"That's not fair," she said. "It was always yours as
much as mine. I left everything and I went wherever
"I did when you were all right. But now I hate it. I
don't see why that had to happen to your leg. What
have we done to have that happen to us?"
"I suppose what I did was to forget to put iodine on it
when I first scratched it. Then I didn't pay any
attention to it because I never infect. Then, later,
when it got bad, it was probably using that weak
carbolic solution when the other antiseptics ran out
that paralyzed the minute blood vessels and started
the gangrene." He looked at her, "What else'"
"I don't mean that."
"If we would have hired a good mechanic instead of a
half-baked Kikuyu driver, he would have checked the
oil and never burned out that bearing in the truck."
"I don't mean that."
"If you hadn't left your own people, your goddamned
Old Westbury Saratoga, Palm Beach people to take
me on " *'Why, I loved you. That's not fair. I love
you now. I'll always love you Don't you love me?"
"No," said the man. "I don't think so. I never have."
"Harry, what are you saying? You're out of your
head."
"No. I haven't any head to go out of."
"Don't drink that," she said. "Darling, please don't
drink that. We have to do everything we can."
"You do it," he said. "I'm tired."
Now in his mind he saw a railway station at
Karagatch and he was standing with his pack and
that was the headlight of the Simplon-Offent cutting
the dark now and he was leaving Thrace then after
the retreat. That was one of the things he had saved
to write, with, in the morning at breakfast, looking
out the window and seeing snow on the mountains in
Bulgaffa and Nansen's Secretary asking the old man
if it were snow and the old man looking at it and
saying, No, that's not snow. It's too early for snow.
And the Secretary repeating to the other girls, No,
you see. It's not snow and them all saying, It's not
snow we were mistaken. But it was the snow all right
and he sent them on into it when he evolved exchange
of populations. And it was snow they tramped along
in until they died that winter.
84
It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year
up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the
woodcutter's house with the big square porcelain
stove that filled half the room, and they slept on
mattresses filled with beech leaves, the time the
deserter came with his feet bloody in the snow. He
said the police were right behind him and they gave
him woolen socks and held the gendarmes talking
until the tracks had drifted over.
In Schrunz, on Christmas day, the snow was so bright
it hurt your eyes when you looked out from the
Weinstube and saw every one coming home from
church. That was where they walked up the sleighsmoothed urine-yellowed road along the river with
the steep pine hills, skis heavy on the shoulder, and
where they ran down the glacier above the
Madlenerhaus, the snow as smooth to see as cake
frosting and as light as powder and he remembered
the noiseless rush the speed made as you dropped
down like a bird.
How many winters had he lived in the Vorarlberg
and the Arlberg? It was four and then he remembered
the man who had the fox to sell when they had walked
into Bludenz, that time to buy presents, and the
cherry-pit taste of good kirsch, the fast-slipping rush
of running powder-snow on crust, singing ''Hi! Ho!
said Rolly!' ' as you ran down the last stretch to the
steep drop, taking it straight, then running the
orchard in three turns and out across the ditch and
onto the icy road behind the inn. Knocking your
bindings loose, kicking the skis free and leaning them
up against the wooden wall of the inn, the lamplight
coming from the window, where inside, in the smoky,
new-wine smelling warmth, they were playing the
accordion.
"Where did we stay in Paris?" he asked the woman
who was sitting by him in a canvas chair, now, in
Africa.
"At the Crillon. You know that."
"Why do I know that?"
They were snow-bound a week in the Madlenerhaus
that time in the blizzard playing cards in the smoke
by the lantern light and the stakes were higher all the
time as Herr Lent lost more. Finally he lost it all.
Everything, the Skischule money and all the season's
profit and then his capital. He could see him with his
long nose, picking up the cards and then opening,
"Sans Voir." There was always gambling then. When
there was no snow you gambled and when there was
too much you gambled. He thought of all the time in
his life he had spent gambling.
But he had never written a line of that, nor of that
cold, bright Christmas day with the mountains
showing across the plain that Barker had flown
across the lines to bomb the Austrian officers' leave
train, machine-gunning them as they scattered and
ran. He remembered Barker afterwards coming into
the mess and starting to tell about it. And how quiet it
got and then somebody saying, ''You bloody
murderous bastard.''
Those were the same Austrians they killed then that
he skied with later. No not the same. Hans, that he
skied with all that year, had been in the Kaiser
Jagers and when they went hunting hares together up
the little valley above the saw-mill they had talked of
the fighting on Pasubio and of the attack on
Perticara and Asalone and he had never written a
word of that. Nor of Monte Corona, nor the Sette
Communi, nor of Arsiero.
"That's where we always stayed."
"No. Not always."
"There and at the Pavillion Henri-Quatre in St.
Germain. You said you loved it there."
"Love is a dunghill," said Harry. "And I'm the cock
that gets on it to crow."
"If you have to go away," she said, "is it absolutely
necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I
mean do you have to take away everything? Do you
have to kill your horse, and your wife and burn your
saddle and your armour?"
"Yes," he said. "Your damned money was my
armour. My Sword and my Armour."
"Don't."
"All right. I'll stop that. I don't want to hurt you.'
"It's a little bit late now."
"All right then. I'll go on hurting you. It's more
amusing. The only thing I ever really liked to do with
you I can't do now."
"No, that's not true. You liked to do many things and
everything you wanted to do I did."
"Oh, for Christ sake stop bragging, will you?"
85
He looked at her and saw her crying.
"Listen," he said. "Do you think that it is fun to do
this? I don't know why I'm doing it. It's trying to kill
to keep yourself alive, I imagine. I was all right when
we started talking. I didn't mean to start this, and now
I'm crazy as a coot and being as cruel to you as I can
be. Don't pay any attention, darling, to what I say. I
love you, really. You know I love you. I've never
loved any one else the way I love you."
He slipped into the familiar lie he made his bread and
butter by.
"You're sweet to me."
"You bitch," he said. "You rich bitch. That's poetry.
I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten
poetry."
"Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil
now?"
"I don't like to leave anything," the man said. "I don’t
like to leave things behind."
***
It was evening now and he had been asleep. The sun
was gone behind the hill and there was a shadow all
across the plain and the small animals were feeding
close to camp; quick dropping heads and switching
tails, he watched them keeping well out away from
the bush now. The birds no longer waited on the
ground. They were all perched heavily in a tree.
There were many more of them. His personal boy
was sitting by the bed.
"Memsahib's gone to shoot," the boy said. "Does
Bwana want?"
"Nothing."
She had gone to kill a piece of meat and, knowing
how he liked to watch the game, she had gone well
away so she would not disturb this little pocket of the
plain that he could see. She was always thoughtful,
he thought. On anything she knew about, or had read,
or that she had ever heard.
It was not her fault that when he went to her he was
already over. How could a woman know that you
meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only
from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer
meant what he said, his lies were more successful
with women than when he had told them the truth.
It was not so much that he lied as that there was no
truth to tell. He had had his life and it was over and
then he went on living it again with different people
and more money, with the best of the same places,
and some new ones.
You kept from thinking and it was all marvellous.
You were equipped with good insides so that you did
not go to pieces that way, the way most of them had,
and you made an attitude that you cared nothing for
the work you used to do, now that you could no
longer do it. But, in yourself, you said that you would
write about these people; about the very rich; that you
were really not of them but a spy in their country;
that you would leave it and write of it and for once it
would be written by some one who knew what he
was writing of. But he would never do it, because
each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that
which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his
will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.
The people he knew now were all much more
comfortable when he did not work. Africa was where
he had been happiest in the good time of his life, so
he had come out here to start again. They had made
this safari with the minimum of comfort. There was
no hardship; but there was no luxury and he had
thought that he could get back into training that way.
That in some way he could work the fat off his soul
the way a fighter went into the mountains to work
and train in order to burn it out of his body.
She had liked it. She said she loved it. She loved
anything that was exciting, that involved a change of
scene, where there were new people and where things
were pleasant. And he had felt the illusion of
returning strength of will to work. Now if this was
how it ended, and he knew it was, he must not turn
like some snake biting itself because its back was
broken. It wasn't this woman's fault. If it had not been
she it would have been another. If he lived by a lie he
should try to die by it. He heard a shot beyond the
hill.
She shot very well this good, this rich bitch, this
kindly caretaker and destroyer of his talent.
Nonsense. He had destroyed his talent himself. Why
should he blame this woman because she kept him
well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by
betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by
drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his
perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery,
by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook.
What was this? A catalogue of old books? What was
his talent anyway? It was a talent all right but instead
86
of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he
had done, but always what he could do. And he had
chosen to make his living with something else instead
of a pen or a pencil. It was strange, too, wasn't it, that
when he fell in love with another woman, that
woman should always have more money than the last
one? But when he no longer was in love, when he
was only lying, as to this woman, now, who had the
most money of all, who had all the money there was,
who had had a husband and children, who had taken
lovers and been dissatisfied with them, and who
loved him dearly as a writer, as a man, as a
companion and as a proud possession; it was strange
that when he did not love her at all and was lying,
that he should be able to give her more for her money
than when he had really loved.
We must all be cut out for what we do, he thought.
However you make your living is where your talent
lies. He had sold vitality, in one form or another, all
his life and when your affections are not too involved
you give much better value for the money. He had
found that out but he would never write that, now,
either. No, he would not write that, although it was
well worth writing.
Now she came in sight, walking across the open
toward the camp. She was wearing jodphurs and
carrying her rifle. The two boys had a Tommie slung
and they were coming along behind her. She was still
a good-looking woman, he thought, and she had a
pleasant body. She had a great talent and appreciation
for the bed, she was not pretty, but he liked her face,
she read enormously, liked to ride and shoot and,
certainly, she drank too much. Her husband had died
when she was still a comparatively young woman
and for a while she had devoted herself to her two
just-grown children, who did not need her and were
embarrassed at having her about, to her stable of
horses, to books, and to bottles. She liked to read in
the evening before dinner and she drank Scotch and
soda while she read. By dinner she was fairly drunk
and after a bottle of wine at dinner she was usually
drunk enough to sleep.
That was before the lovers. After she had the lovers
she did not drink so much because she did not have to
be drunk to sleep. But the lovers bored her. She had
been married to a man who had never bored her and
these people bored her very much.
Then one of her two children was killed in a plane
crash and after that was over she did not want the
lovers, and drink being no anaesthetic she had to
make another life. Suddenly, she had been acutely
frightened of being alone. But she wanted some one
that she respected with her.
It had begun very simply. She liked what he wrote
and she had always envied the life he led. She
thought he did exactly what he wanted to. The steps
by which she had acquired him and the way in which
she had finally fallen in love with him were all part of
a regular progression in which she had built herself a
new life and he had traded away what remained of
his old life.
He had traded it for security, for comfort too, there
was no denying that, and for what else? He did not
know. She would have bought him anything he
wanted. He knew that. She was a damned nice
woman too. He would as soon be in bed with her as
any one; rather with her, because she was richer,
because she was very pleasant and appreciative and
because she never made scenes. And now this life
that she had built again was coming to a term because
he had not used iodine two weeks ago when a thorn
had scratched his knee as they moved forward trying
to photograph a herd of waterbuck standing, their
heads up, peering while their nostrils searched the air,
their ears spread wide to hear the first noise that
would send them rushing into the bush. They had
bolted, too, before he got the picture.
Here she came now. He turned his head on the cot to
look toward her. "Hello," he said.
"I shot a Tommy ram," she told him. "He'll make you
good broth and I'll have them mash some potatoes
with the Klim. How do you feel?"
"Much better."
"Isn't that lovely? You know I thought perhaps you
would. You were sleeping when I left."
"I had a good sleep. Did you walk far?"
"No. Just around behind the hill. I made quite a good
shot on the Tommy."
"You shoot marvellously, you know."
"I love it. I've loved Africa. Really. If you're all right
it's the most fun that I've ever had. You don't know
the fun it's been to shoot with you. I've loved the
country."
"I love it too."
87
"Darling, you don't know how marvellous it is to see
you feeling better. I couldn't stand it when you felt
that way. You won't talk to me like that again, will
you? Promise me?"
"No," he said. "I don't remember what I said."
"You don't have to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a
middle-aged woman who loves you and wants to do
what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or three
times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me
again, would you?"
Drinking together, with no pain now except the
discomfort of lying in the one position, the boys
lighting a fire, its shadow jumping on the tents, he
could feel the return of acquiescence in this life of
pleasant surrender. She was very good to him. He had
been cruel and unjust in the afternoon. She was a fine
woman, marvellous really. And just then it occurred
to him that he was going to die.
It came with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of
wind; but of a sudden, evil-smelling emptiness and
the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along
the edge of it.
"I'd like to destroy you a few times in bed," he said.
"What is it, Harry?" she asked him.
"Yes. That's the good destruction. That's the way
we're made to be destroyed. The plane will be here
tomorrow."
"Nothing," he said. "You had better move over to the
other side. To windward."
"How do you know?"
"Did Molo change the dressing?"
"I'm sure. It's bound to come. The boys have the
wood all ready and the grass to make the smudge. I
went down and looked at it again today. There's
plenty of room to land and we have the smudges
ready at both ends."
"Yes. I'm just using the boric now."
"What makes you think it will come tomorrow?"
"I'm sure it will. It's overdue now. Then, in town,
they will fix up your leg and then we will have some
good destruction. Not that dreadful talking kind."
"I'm going in to bathe," she said. "I'll be right out. I'll
eat with you and then we'll put the cot in."
"Should we have a drink? The sun is down."
"Do you think you should?"
"I'm having one."
"We'll have one together. Molo, letti dui whiskeysoda!" she called.
"You'd better put on your mosquito boots," he told
her.
"I'll wait till I bathe . . ."
While it grew dark they drank and just before it was
dark and there was no longer enough light to shoot, a
hyena crossed the open on his way around the hill.
"That bastard crosses there every night," the man
said. "Every night for two weeks."
"He's the one makes the noise at night. I don't mind
it. They're a filthy animal though."
"How do you feel?"
"A little wobbly."
So, he said to himself, we did well to stop the
quarrelling. He had never quarrelled much with this
woman, while with the women that he loved he had
quarrelled so much they had finally, always, with the
corrosion of the quarrelling, killed what they had
together. He had loved too much, demanded too
much, and he wore it all out.
He thought about alone in Constantinople that time,
having quarrelled in Paris before he had gone out.
He had whored the whole time and then, when that
was over, and he had failed to kill his loneliness, but
only made it worse, he had written her, the first one,
the one who left him, a letter telling her how he had
never been able to kill it ... How when he thought he
saw her outside the Regence one time it made him go
all faint and sick inside, and that he would follow a
woman who looked like her in some way, along the
Boulevard, afraid to see it was not she, afraid to lose
the feeling it gave him. How every one he had slept
with had only made him miss her more. How what
she had done could never matter since he knew he
could not cure himself of loving her. He wrote this
letter at the Club, cold sober, and mailed it to New
York asking her to write him at the of fice in Paris.
88
That seemed safe. And that night missing her so much
it made him feel hollow sick inside, he wandered up
past Maxim's, picked a girl up and took her out to
supper. He had gone to a place to dance with her
afterward, she danced badly, and left her for a hot
Armenian slut, that swung her belly against him so it
almost scalded. He took her away from a British
gunner subaltern after a row. The gunner asked him
outside and they fought in the street on the cobbles in
the dark. He'd hit him twice, hard, on the side of the
jaw and when he didn't go down he knew he was in
for a fight. The gunner hit him in the body, then
beside his eye. He swung with his left again and
landed and the gunner fell on him and grabbed his
coat and tore the sleeve off and he clubbed him twice
behind the ear and then smashed him with his right
as he pushed him away. When the gunner went down
his head hit first and he ran with the girl because
they heard the M.P. 's coming. They got into a taxi
and drove out to Rimmily Hissa along the Bosphorus,
and around, and back in the cool night and went to
bed and she felt as over-ripe as she looked but
smooth, rose-petal, syrupy, smooth-bellied, bigbreasted and needed no pillow under her buttocks,
and he left her before she was awake looking blousy
enough in the first daylight and turned up at the Pera
Palace with a black eye, carrying his coat because
one sleeve was missing.
Tzara, who always wore a monocle and had a
headache, and, back at the apartment with his wife
that now he loved again, the quarrel all over, the
madness all over, glad to be home, the office sent his
mail up to the flat. So then the letter in answer to the
one he'd written came in on a platter one morning
and when he saw the hand writing he went cold all
over and tried to slip the letter underneath another.
But his wife said, ''Who is that letter from, dear?''
and that was the end of the beginning of that.
That same night he left for Anatolia and he
remembered, later on that trip, riding all day through
fields of the poppies that they raised for opium and
how strange it made you feel, finally, and all the
distances seemed wrong, to where they had made the
attack with the newly arrived Constantine officers,
that did not know a god-damned thing, and the
artillery had fired into the troops and the British
observer had cried like a child.
"All right."
That was the day he'd first seen dead men wearing
white ballet skirts and upturned shoes with pompons
on them. The Turks had come steadily and lumpily
and he had seen the skirted men running and the of
ficers shooting into them and running then
themselves and he and the British observer had run
too until his lungs ached and his mouth was full of
the taste of pennies and they stopped behind some
rocks and there were the Turks coming as lumpily as
ever. Later he had seen the things that he could never
think of and later still he had seen much worse. So
when he got back to Paris that time he could not talk
about it or stand to have it mentioned. And there in
the cafe as he passed was that American poet with a
pile of saucers in front of him and a stupid look on
his potato face talking about the Dada movement
with a Roumanian who said his name was Tristan
"I'm going to die tonight," he said. "I don't need my
strength up."
He remembered the good times with them all, and the
quarrels. They always picked the finest places to have
the quarrels. And why had they always quarrelled
when he was feeling best? He had never written any
of that because, at first, he never wanted to hurt any
one and then it seemed as though there was enough
to write without it. But he had always thought that he
would write it finally. There was so much to write. He
had seen the world change; not just the events;
although he had seen many of them and had watched
the people, but he had seen the subtler change and he
could remember how the people were at different
times. He had been in it and he had watched it and it
was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.
"How do you feel?" she said. She had come out from
the tent now after her bath.
"Could you eat now?" He saw Molo behind her with
the folding table and the other boy with the dishes.
"I want to write," he said.
"You ought to take some broth to keep your strength
up."
"Don't be melodramatic, Harry, please," she said.
"Why don't you use your nose? I'm rotted half way up
my thigh now. What the hell should I fool with broth
for? Molo bring whiskey-soda."
"Please take the broth," she said gently.
"All right."
The broth was too hot. He had to hold it in the cup
until it cooled enough to take it and then he just got it
down without gagging.
89
"You're a fine woman," he said. "Don't pay any
attention to me."
She looked at him with her well-known, well-loved
face from Spur and Town & Country, only a little the
worse for drink, only a little the worse for bed, but
Town & Country never showed those good breasts
and those useful thighs and those lightly small-ofback-caressing hands, and as he looked and saw her
well-known pleasant smile, he felt death come again.
in.
This time there was no rush. It was a puff, as of a
wind that makes a candle flicker and the flame go
tall.
"They can bring my net out later and hang it from the
tree and build the fire up. I'm not going in the tent
tonight. It's not worth moving. It's a clear night.
There won't be any rain."
So this was how you died, in whispers that you did
not hear. Well, there would be no more quarrelling.
He could promise that. The one experience that he
had never had he was not going to spoil now. He
probably would. You spoiled everything. But perhaps
he wouldn't.
"You can't take dictation, can you?"
"I never learned," she told him.
"That's all right."
There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as
though it telescoped so that you might put it all into
one paragraph if you could get it right.
There was a log house, chinked white with mortar, on
a hill above the lake. There was a bell on a pole by
the door to call the people in to meals. Behind the
house were fields and behind the fields was the
timber. A line of lombardy poplars ran from the
house to the dock. Other poplars ran along the point.
A road went up to the hills along the edge of the
timber and along that road he picked blackberries.
Then that log house was burned down and all the
guns that had been on deer foot racks above the open
fire place were burned and afterwards their barrels,
with the lead melted in the magazines, and the stocks
burned away, lay out on the heap of ashes that were
used to make lye for the big iron soap kettles, and
you asked Grandfather if you could have them to play
with, and he said, no. You see they were his guns still
and he never bought any others. Nor did he hunt any
more. The house was rebuilt in the same place out of
lumber now and painted white and from its porch you
saw the poplars and the lake beyond; but there were
never any more guns. The barrels of the guns that
had hung on the deer feet on the wall of the log house
lay out there on the heap of ashes and no one ever
touched them.
In the Black Forest, after the war, we rented a trout
stream and there were two ways to walk to it. One
was down the valley from Triberg and around the
valley road in the shade of the trees that bordered the
white road, and then up a side road that went up
through the hills past many small farms, with the big
Schwarzwald houses, until that road crossed the
stream. That was where our fishing began.
The other way was to climb steeply up to the edge of
the woods and then go across the top of the hills
through the pine woods, and then out to the edge of a
meadow and down across this meadow to the bridge.
There were birches along the stream and it was not
big, but narrow, clear and fast, with pools where it
had cut under the roots of the birches. At the Hotel in
Triberg the proprietor had a fine season. It was very
pleasant and we were all great friends. The next year
came the inflation and the money he had made the
year before was not enough to buy supplies to open
the hotel and he hanged himself. You could dictate
that, but you could not dictate the Place
Contrescarpe where the flower sellers dyed their
flowers in the street and the dye ran over the paving
where the autobus started and the old men and the
women, always drunk on wine and bad mare; and the
children with their noses running in the cold; the
smell of dirty sweat and poverty and drunkenness at
the Cafe' des Amateurs and the whores at the Bal
Musette they lived above. The concierge who
entertained the trooper of the Garde Republicaine in
her loge, his horse-hair-plumed helmet on a chair.
The locataire across the hall whose husband was a
bicycle racer and her joy that morning at the
cremerie when she had opened L'Auto and seen
where he placed third in Paris-Tours, his first big
race. She had blushed and laughed and then gone
upstairs crying with the yellow sporting paper in her
hand. The husband of the woman who ran the Bal
Musette drove a taxi and when he, Harry, had to take
an early plane the husband knocked upon the door to
wake him and they each drank a glass of white wine
at the zinc of the bar before they started. He knew his
neighbors in that quarter then because they all were
poor.
Around that Place there were two kinds; the
drunkards and the sportifs. The drunkards killed their
poverty that way; the sportifs took it out in exercise.
90
They were the descendants of the Communards and it
was no struggle for them to know their politics. They
knew who had shot their fathers, their relatives, their
brothers, and their friends when the Versailles troops
came in and took the town after the Commune and
executed any one they could catch with calloused
hands, or who wore a cap, or carried any other sign
he was a working man. And in that poverty, and in
that quarter across the street from a Boucherie
Chevaline and a wine cooperative he had written the
start of all he was to do. There never was another
part of Paris that he loved like that, the sprawling
trees, the old white plastered houses painted brown
below, the long green of the autobus in that round
square, the purple flower dye upon the paving, the
sudden drop down the hill of the rue Cardinal
Lemoine to the River, and the other way the narrow
crowded world of the rue Mouffetard. The street that
ran up toward the Pantheon and the other that he
always took with the bicycle, the only asphalted street
in all that quarter, smooth under the tires, with the
high narrow houses and the cheap tall hotel where
Paul Verlaine had died. There were only two rooms
in the apartments where they lived and he had a
room on the top floor of that hotel that cost him sixty
francs a month where he did his writing, and from it
he could see the roofs and chimney pots and all the
hills of Paris.
From the apartment you could only see the wood and
coal man's place. He sold wine too, bad wine. The
golden horse's head outside the Boucherie Chevaline
where the carcasses hung yellow gold and red in the
open window, and the green painted co-operative
where they bought their wine; good wine and cheap.
The rest was plaster walls and the windows of the
neighbors. The neighbors who, at night, when some
one lay drunk in the street, moaning and groaning in
that typical French ivresse that you were
propaganded to believe did not exist, would open
their windows and then the murmur of talk.
''Where is the policeman? When you don't want him
the bugger is always there. He's sleeping with some
concierge. Get the Agent. " Till some one threw a
bucket of water from a window and the moaning
stopped. ''What's that? Water. Ah, that's intelligent."
And the windows shutting. Marie, his femme de
menage, protesting against the eight-hour day
saying, ''If a husband works until six he gets only a
riffle drunk on the way home and does not waste too
much. If he works only until five he is drunk every
night and one has no money. It is the wife of the
working man who suffers from this shortening of
hours. '
"Wouldn't you like some more broth?" the woman
asked him now.
"No, thank you very much. It is awfully good."
"Try just a little."
"I would like a whiskey-soda."
"It's not good for you."
"No. It's bad for me. Cole Porter wrote the words and
the music. This knowledge that you're going mad for
me."
"You know I like you to drink."
"Oh yes. Only it's bad for me."
When she goes, he thought, I'll have all I want. Not
all I want but all there is. Ayee he was tired. Too
tired. He was going to sleep a little while. He lay still
and death was not there. It must have gone around
another street. It went in pairs, on bicycles, and
moved absolutely silently on the pavements.
No, he had never written about Paris. Not the Paris
that he cared about. But what about the rest that he
had never written?
What about the ranch and the silvered gray of the
sage brush, the quick, clear water in the irrigation
ditches, and the heavy green of the alfalfa. The trail
went up into the hills and the cattle in the summer
were shy as deer. The bawling and the steady noise
and slow moving mass raising a dust as you brought
them down in the fall. And behind the mountains, the
clear sharpness of the peak in the evening light and,
riding down along the trail in the moonlight, bright
across the valley. Now he remembered coming down
through the timber in the dark holding the horse's tail
when you could not see and all the stories that he
meant to write.
About the half-wit chore boy who was left at the
ranch that time and told not to let any one get any
hay, and that old bastard from the Forks who had
beaten the boy when he had worked for him stopping
to get some feed. The boy refusing and the old man
saying he would beat him again. The boy got the rifle
from the kitchen and shot him when he tried to come
into the barn and when they came back to the ranch
he'd been dead a week, frozen in the corral, and the
dogs had eaten part of him. But what was left you
packed on a sled wrapped in a blanket and roped on
and you got the boy to help you haul it, and the two
91
of you took it out over the road on skis, and sixty
miles down to town to turn the boy over. He having
no idea that he would be arrested. Thinking he had
done his duty and that you were his friend and he
would be rewarded. He'd helped to haul the old man
in so everybody could know how bad the old man had
been and how he'd tried to steal some feed that didn't
belong to him, and when the sheriff put the handcuffs
on the boy he couldn't believe it. Then he'd started to
cry. That was one story he had saved to write. He
knew at least twenty good stories from out there and
he had never written one. Why?
"You tell them why," he said.
Shoot me, Harry. For Christ sake shoot me. They had
had an argument one time about our Lord never
sending you anything you could not bear and some
one's theory had been that meant that at a certain
time the pain passed you out automatically. But he
had always remembered Williamson, that night.
Nothing passed out Williamson until he gave him all
his morphine tablets that he had always saved to use
himself and then they did not work right away.
Still this now, that he had, was very easy; and if it
was no worse as it went on there was nothing to
worry about. Except that he would rather be in better
company.
"Why what, dear?"
"Why nothing."
She didn't drink so much, now, since she had him.
But if he lived he would never write about her, he
knew that now. Nor about any of them. The rich were
dull and they drank too much, or they played too
much backgammon. They were dull and they were
repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his
romantic awe of them and how he had started a story
once that began, "The very rich are different from
you and me." And how some one had said to Julian,
Yes, they have more money. But that was not
humorous to Julian. He thought they were a special
glamourous race and when he found they weren't it
wrecked him just as much as any other thing that
wrecked him.
He had been contemptuous of those who wrecked.
You did not have to like it because you understood it.
He could beat anything, he thought, because no thing
could hurt him if he did not care.
All right. Now he would not care for death. One thing
he had always dreaded was the pain. He could stand
pain as well as any man, until it went on too long,
and wore him out, but here he had something that had
hurt frightfully and just when he had felt it breaking
him, the pain had stopped.
He thought a little about the company that he would
like to have.
No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too
long, and do too late, you can't expect to find the
people still there. The people all are gone. The party's
over and you are with your hostess now.
I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything
else, he thought.
"It's a bore," he said out loud.
"What is, my dear?"
"Anything you do too bloody long."
He looked at her face between him and the fire. She
was leaning back in the chair and the firelight shone
on her pleasantly lined face and he could see that she
was sleepy. He heard the hyena make a noise just
outside the range of the fire.
"I've been writing," he said. "But I got tired."
"Do you think you will be able to sleep?"
"Pretty sure. Why don't you turn in?"
"I like to sit here with you."
He remembered long ago when Williamson, the
bombing officer, had been hit by a stick bomb some
one in a German patrol had thrown as he was
coming in through the wire that night and,
screaming, had begged every one to kill him. He was
a fat man, very brave, and a good officer, although
addicted to fantastic shows. But that night he was
caught in the wire, with a flare lighting him up and
his bowels spilled out into the wire, so when they
brought him in, alive, they had to cut him loose.
"Do you feel anything strange?" he asked her.
"No. Just a little sleepy."
"I do," he said.
He had just felt death come by again.
92
"You know the only thing I've never lost is
curiosity," he said to her.
"Bad leg," he told him. "Will you have some
breakfast?"
"You've never lost anything. You're the most
complete man I've ever known."
"Thanks. I'll just have some tea. It's the Puss Moth
you know. I won't be able to take the Memsahib.
There's only room for one. Your lorry is on the way."
"Christ," he said. "How little a woman knows. What
is that? Your intuition?"
Because, just then, death had come and rested its
head on the foot of the cot and he could smell its
breath.
"Never believe any of that about a scythe and a
skull," he told her. "It can be two bicycle policemen
as easily, or be a bird. Or it can have a wide snout
like a hyena."
It had moved up on him now, but it had no shape any
more. It simply occupied space.
"Tell it to go away."
It did not go away but moved a little closer.
"You've got a hell of a breath," he told it. "You
stinking bastard."
It moved up closer to him still and now he could not
speak to it, and when it saw he could not speak it
came a little closer, and now he tried to send it away
without speaking, but it moved in on him so its
weight was all upon his chest, and while it crouched
there and he could not move or speak, he heard the
woman say, "Bwana is asleep now. Take the cot up
very gently and carry it into the tent."
He could not speak to tell her to make it go away and
it crouched now, heavier, so he could not breathe.
And then, while they lifted the cot, suddenly it was
all right and the weight went from his chest.
It was morning and had been morning for some time
and he heard the plane. It showed very tiny and then
made a wide circle and the boys ran out and lit the
fires, using kerosene, and piled on grass so there were
two big smudges at each end of the level place and
the morning breeze blew them toward the camp and
the plane circled twice more, low this time, and then
glided down and levelled off and landed smoothly
and, coming walking toward him, was old Compton
in slacks, a tweed jacket and a brown felt hat.
Helen had taken Compton aside and was speaking to
him. Compton came back more cheery than ever.
"We'll get you right in," he said. "I'll be back for the
Mem. Now I'm afraid I'll have to stop at Arusha to
refuel. We'd better get going."
"What about the tea?"
"I don't really care about it, you know."
The boys had picked up the cot and carried it around
the green tents and down along the rock and out onto
the plain and along past the smudges that were
burning brightly now, the grass all consumed, and the
wind fanning the fire, to the little plane. It was
difficult getting him in, but once in he lay back in the
leather seat, and the leg was stuck straight out to one
side of the seat where Compton sat. Compton started
the motor and got in. He waved to Helen and to the
boys and, as the clatter moved into the old familiar
roar, they swung around with Compie watching for
warthog holes and roared, bumping, along the stretch
between the fires and with the last bump rose and he
saw them all standing below, waving, and the camp
beside the hill, flattening now, and the plain
spreading, clumps of trees, and the bush flattening,
while the game trails ran now smoothly to the dry
waterholes, and there was a new water that he had
never known of. The zebra, small rounded backs
now, and the wildebeeste, big-headed dots seeming to
climb as they moved in long fingers across the plain,
now scattering as the shadow came toward them, they
were tiny now, and the movement had no gallop, and
the plain as far as you could see, gray-yellow now
and ahead old Compie's tweed back and the brown
felt hat. Then they were over the first hills and the
wildebeeste were trailing up them, and then they
were over mountains with sudden depths of greenrising forest and the solid bamboo slopes, and then
the heavy forest again, sculptured into peaks and
hollows until they crossed, and hills sloped down and
then another plain, hot now, and purple brown,
bumpy with heat and Compie looking back to see
how he was riding. Then there were other mountains
dark ahead.
"What's the matter, old cock?" Compton said.
And then instead of going on to Arusha they turned
left, he evidently figured that they had the gas, and
93
looking down he saw a pink sifting cloud, moving
over the ground, and in the air, like the first snow in
at ii blizzard, that comes from nowhere, and he knew
the locusts were coming, up from the South. Then
they began to climb and they were going to the East it
seemed, and then it darkened and they were in a
storm, the rain so thick it seemed like flying through
a waterfall, and then they were out and Compie
turned his head and grinned and pointed and there,
ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world,
great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was
the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he knew that
there was where he was going.
Just then the hyena stopped whimpering in the night
and started to make a strange, human, almost crying
sound. The woman heard it and, stirred uneasily. She
did not wake. In her dream she was at the house on
Long Island and it was the night before her daughter's
debut. Somehow her father was there and he had
been very rude. Then the noise the hyena made was
so loud she woke and for a moment she did not know
where she was and she was very afraid. Then she
took the flashlight and shone it on the other cot that
they had carried in after Harry had gone to sleep. She
could see his bulk under the mosquito bar but
somehow he had gotten his leg out and it hung down
alongside the cot. The dressings had all come down
and she could not look at it.
"Molo," she called, "Molo! Molo!"
Then she said, "Harry, Harry!" Then her voice rising,
"Harry! Please. Oh Harry!"
There was no answer and she could not hear him
breathing.
Outside the tent the hyena made the same strange
noise that had awakened her. But she did not hear
him for the beating of her heart.
_______________________________________
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving
FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE
DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.
A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky.
CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which
indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad
expansion of the river denominated by the ancient
Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they
always prudently shortened sail and implored the
protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there
lies a small market town or rural port, which by some
is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally
and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.
This name was given, we are told, in former days, by
the good housewives of the adjacent country, from
the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger
about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it
may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to
it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far
from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a
little valley or rather lap of land among high hills,
which is one of the quietest places in the whole
world. A small brook glides through it, with just
murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the
occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a
woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks
in upon the uniform tranquillity.
I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in
squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees
that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered
into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly
quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as
it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was
prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If
ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal
from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly
away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none
more promising than this little valley.
From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar
character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from
the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has
long been known by the name of SLEEPY
HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy
Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country.
A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the
land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say
that the place was bewitched by a High German
doctor, during the early days of the settlement;
others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard
of his tribe, held his powwows there before the
country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson.
Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway
of some witching power, that holds a spell over the
minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a
continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of
marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions,
and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and
voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds
with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight
superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener
94
across the valley than in any other part of the country,
and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to
make it the favorite scene of her gambols.
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this
enchanted region, and seems to be commander-inchief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a
figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by
some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose
head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in
some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War,
and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk
hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the
wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the
valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and
especially to the vicinity of a church at no great
distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic
historians of those parts, who have been careful in
collecting and collating the floating facts concerning
this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having
been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to
the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and
that the rushing speed with which he sometimes
passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is
owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back
to the churchyard before daybreak.
Such is the general purport of this legendary
superstition, which has furnished materials for many
a wild story in that region of shadows; and the
spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the
name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have
mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of
the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one
who resides there for a time. However wide awake
they may have been before they entered that sleepy
region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the
witching influence of the air, and begin to grow
imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.
I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud, for
it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here
and there embosomed in the great State of New York,
that population, manners, and customs remain fixed,
while the great torrent of migration and
improvement, which is making such incessant
changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps
by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks
of still water, which border a rapid stream, where we
may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at
anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor,
undisturbed by the rush of the passing current.
Though many years have elapsed since I trod the
drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question
whether I should not still find the same trees and the
same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.
In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote
period of American history, that is to say, some thirty
years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod
Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it,
"tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of
instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a
native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the
Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the
forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier
woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen
of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was
tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders,
long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of
his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels,
and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His
head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large
green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it
looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle
neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him
striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day,
with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him,
one might have mistaken him for the genius of
famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow
eloped from a cornfield.
His schoolhouse was a low building of one large
room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly
glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old
copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant
hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door,
and stakes set against the window shutters; so that
though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he
would find some embarrassment in getting out,--an
idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost
Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The
schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant
situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook
running close by, and a formidable birch-tree
growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur
of his pupils' voices, conning over their lessons,
might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the
hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the
authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of
menace or command, or, peradventure, by the
appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy
loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth
to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in
mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the
child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not
spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he was
one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in
95
the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he
administered justice with discrimination rather than
severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak,
and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny
stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod,
was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of
justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion
on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted
Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew
dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he
called "doing his duty by their parents;" and he never
inflicted a chastisement without following it by the
assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that
"he would remember it and thank him for it the
longest day he had to live."
Sundays, to take his station in front of the church
gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his
own mind, he completely carried away the palm from
the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far
above all the rest of the congregation; and there are
peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and
which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the
opposite side of the millpond, on a still Sunday
morning, which are said to be legitimately descended
from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little
makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly
denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy
pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought,
by all who understood nothing of the labor of
headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.
When school hours were over, he was even the
companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on
holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller
ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or
good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts
of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on
good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from
his school was small, and would have been scarcely
sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was
a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating
powers of an anaconda; but to help out his
maintenance, he was, according to country custom in
those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the
farmers whose children he instructed. With these he
lived successively a week at a time, thus going the
rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly
effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.
The schoolmaster is generally a man of some
importance in the female circle of a rural
neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle,
gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and
accomplishments to the rough country swains, and,
indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His
appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little
stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition
of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or,
peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man
of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the
smiles of all the country damsels. How he would
figure among them in the churchyard, between
services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from
the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees;
reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the
tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of
them, along the banks of the adjacent millpond; while
the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly
back, envying his superior elegance and address.
That all this might not be too onerous on the purses
of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs
of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as
mere drones, he had various ways of rendering
himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the
farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their
farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took
the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and
cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the
dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he
lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became
wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor
in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children,
particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold,
which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold,
he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a
cradle with his foot for whole hours together.
In addition to his other vocations, he was the singingmaster of the neighborhood, and picked up many
bright shillings by instructing the young folks in
psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on
From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of
travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local
gossip from house to house, so that his appearance
was always greeted with satisfaction. He was,
moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great
erudition, for he had read several books quite
through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's
"History of New England Witchcraft," in which, by
the way, he most firmly and potently believed.
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness
and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous,
and his powers of digesting it, were equally
extraordinary; and both had been increased by his
residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too
gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was
often his delight, after his school was dismissed in
the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of
clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by
96
his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's
direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening
made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes.
Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream
and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he
happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at
that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination,-the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the
boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm,
the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden
rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their
roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly
in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as
one of uncommon brightness would stream across his
path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle
came winging his blundering flight against him, the
poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the
idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only
resource on such occasions, either to drown thought
or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes
and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by
their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe
at hearing his nasal melody, "in linked sweetness
long drawn out," floating from the distant hill, or
along the dusky road.
Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass
long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as
they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples
roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to
their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and
haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted
bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the
headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the
Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would
delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft,
and of the direful omens and portentous sights and
sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times
of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully
with speculations upon comets and shooting stars;
and with the alarming fact that the world did
absolutely turn round, and that they were half the
time topsy-turvy!
But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly
cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was
all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and
where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it
was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent
walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows
beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a
snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every
trembling ray of light streaming across the waste
fields from some distant window! How often was he
appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which,
like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often
did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his
own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and
dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold
some uncouth being tramping close behind him! And
how often was he thrown into complete dismay by
some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the
idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his
nightly scourings!
All these, however, were mere terrors of the night,
phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and
though he had seen many spectres in his time, and
been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes,
in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end
to all these evils; and he would have passed a
pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his
works, if his path had not been crossed by a being
that causes more perplexity to mortal man than
ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put
together, and that was--a woman.
Among the musical disciples who assembled, one
evening in each week, to receive his instructions in
psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and
only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a
blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge;
ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her
father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely
for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was
withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived
even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and
modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms.
She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which
her great-great-grandmother had brought over from
Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time,
and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display
the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.
Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards
the sex; and it is not to be wondered at that so
tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes, more
especially after he had visited her in her paternal
mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture
of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He
seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts
beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within
those everything was snug, happy and wellconditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not
proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty
abundance, rather than the style in which he lived.
His stronghold was situated on the banks of the
Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile
nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of
nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches
over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of
the softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed
97
of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the
grass, to a neighboring brook, that babbled along
among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the
farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served
for a church; every window and crevice of which
seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm;
the flail was busily resounding within it from
morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed
twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some
with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather,
some with their heads under their wings or buried in
their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and
bowing about their dames, were enjoying the
sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were
grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens,
from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of
sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron
of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond,
convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of
turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and
Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered
housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry.
Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that
pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman,
clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the
pride and gladness of his heart,--sometimes tearing
up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling
his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy
the rich morsel which he had discovered.
The pedagogue's mouth watered as he looked upon
this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In
his devouring mind's eye, he pictured to himself
every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in
his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were
snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in
with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in
their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in
dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent
competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw
carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy
relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily
trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and,
peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and
even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his
back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving
that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to
ask while living.
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he
rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands,
the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and
Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy
fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van
Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to
inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded
with the idea, how they might be readily turned into
cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of
wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay,
his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and
presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole
family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon
loaded with household trumpery, with pots and
kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself
bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels,
setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee,--or the Lord
knows where!
When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart
was complete. It was one of those spacious
farmhouses, with high- ridged but lowly sloping
roofs, built in the style handed down from the first
Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a
piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in
bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness,
various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in
the neighboring river. Benches were built along the
sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at
one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various
uses to which this important porch might be devoted.
From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the
hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the
place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent
pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In
one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be
spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just
from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of
dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along
the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and
a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor,
where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany
tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their
accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their
covert of asparagus tops; mock- oranges and conchshells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of variouscolored birds eggs were suspended above it; a great
ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room,
and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open,
displayed immense treasures of old silver and wellmended china.
From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these
regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an
end, and his only study was how to gain the
affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In
this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties
than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of
yore, who seldom had anything but giants,
enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily
conquered adversaries, to contend with and had to
make his way merely through gates of iron and brass,
and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the
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lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved
as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre
of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her
hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary,
had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette,
beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which
were forever presenting new difficulties and
impediments; and he had to encounter a host of
fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the
numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to
her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon
each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause
against any new competitor.
This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the
blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth
gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were
something like the gentle caresses and endearments
of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not
altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his
advances were signals for rival candidates to retire,
who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours;
insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van
Tassel's paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his
master was courting, or, as it is termed, "sparking,"
within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and
carried the war into other quarters.
Among these, the most formidable was a burly,
roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham,
or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van
Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with
his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broadshouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black
hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance,
having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his
Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had
received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which
he was universally known. He was famed for great
knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as
dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost
at all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy
which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life,
was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one
side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone
that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always
ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more
mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all
his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of
waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four
boon companions, who regarded him as their model,
and at the head of whom he scoured the country,
attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles
round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur
cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail; and when
the folks at a country gathering descried this wellknown crest at a distance, whisking about among a
squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a
squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing
along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop
and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old
dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a
moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and
then exclaim, "Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his
gang!" The neighbors looked upon him with a
mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and,
when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in
the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted
Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.
Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod
Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a
stouter man than he would have shrunk from the
competition, and a wiser man would have despaired.
He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and
perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit
like a supple-jack--yielding, but tough; though he
bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath
the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away-jerk!--he was as erect, and carried his head as high as
ever.
To have taken the field openly against his rival would
have been madness; for he was not a man to be
thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy
lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his
advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner.
Under cover of his character of singing-master, he
made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had
anything to apprehend from the meddlesome
interference of parents, which is so often a stumblingblock in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an
easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even
than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an
excellent father, let her have her way in everything.
His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to
attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry;
for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are
foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can
take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame
bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel
at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit
smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the
achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed
with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly
fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the
mean time, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the
daughter by the side of the spring under the great
elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so
favorable to the lover's eloquence.
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I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed
and won. To me they have always been matters of
riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one
vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have
a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a
thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill
to gain the former, but a still greater proof of
generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for
man must battle for his fortress at every door and
window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is
therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps
undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is
indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with
the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment
Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the
former evidently declined: his horse was no longer
seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a
deadly feud gradually arose between him and the
preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.
Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his
nature, would fain have carried matters to open
warfare and have settled their pretensions to the lady,
according to the mode of those most concise and
simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore,-- by
single combat; but Ichabod was too conscious of the
superior might of his adversary to enter the lists
against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that
he would "double the schoolmaster up, and lay him
on a shelf of his own schoolhouse;" and he was too
wary to give him an opportunity. There was
something extremely provoking in this obstinately
pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw
upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition,
and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival.
Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution
to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried
his hitherto peaceful domains; smoked out his singing
school by stopping up the chimney; broke into the
schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable
fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned
everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster
began to think all the witches in the country held
their meetings there. But what was still more
annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning him
into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a
scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most
ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of
Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody.
In this way matters went on for some time, without
producing any material effect on the relative
situations of the contending powers. On a fine
autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat
enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually
watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In
his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic
power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails
behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers,
while on the desk before him might be seen sundry
contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected
upon the persons of idle urchins, such as halfmunched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and
whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks.
Apparently there had been some appalling act of
justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all
busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering
behind them with one eye kept upon the master; and
a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the
schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the
appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket and
trowsers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the
cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a
ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed
with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up
to the school door with an invitation to Ichabod to
attend a merry-making or "quilting frolic," to be held
that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel's; and having
delivered his message with that air of importance,
and effort at fine language, which a negro is apt to
display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed
over the brook, and was seen scampering away up the
hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his
mission.
All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet
schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their
lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were
nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those
who were tardy had a smart application now and then
in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a
tall word. Books were flung aside without being put
away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned,
benches thrown down, and the whole school was
turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting
forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and
racketing about the green in joy at their early
emancipation.
The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half
hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best,
and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his
locks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in
the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance
before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he
borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was
domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of
Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued
forth like a knight- errant in quest of adventures. But
it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story,
give some account of the looks and equipments of my
hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a
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broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost
everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and
shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer;
his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with
burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and
spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine
devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in
his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of
Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of
his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a
furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of
his own spirit into the animal; for, old and brokendown as he looked, there was more of the lurking
devil in him than in any young filly in the country.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He
rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees
nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp
elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his
whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and
as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was
not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small
wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his
scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the
skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the
horses tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and
his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans
Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition
as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky
was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and
golden livery which we always associate with the
idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober
brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer
kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes
of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild
ducks began to make their appearance high in the air;
the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the
groves of beech and hickory- nuts, and the pensive
whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring
stubble field.
The small birds were taking their farewell banquets.
In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered,
chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to
tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety
around them. There was the honest cock robin, the
favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud
querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in
sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker
with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and
splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt
wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap
of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in
his gay light blue coat and white underclothes,
screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and
bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with
every songster of the grove.
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever
open to every symptom of culinary abundance,
ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly
autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples;
some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees;
some gathered into baskets and barrels for the
market; others heaped up in rich piles for the ciderpress. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian
corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy
coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and
hasty- pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying
beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to
the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most
luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant
buckwheat fields breathing the odor of the beehive,
and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over
his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and
garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little
dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.
Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and
"sugared suppositions," he journeyed along the sides
of a range of hills which look out upon some of the
goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun
gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west.
The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless
and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle
undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of
the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in
the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The
horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually
into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep
blue of the mid- heaven. A slanting ray lingered on
the woody crests of the precipices that overhung
some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the
dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop
was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down
with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the
mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along
the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was
suspended in the air.
It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the
castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found
thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent
country. Old farmers, a spare leathern- faced race, in
homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge
shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk,
withered little dames, in close-crimped caps, longwaisted short gowns, homespun petticoats, with
scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets
hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as
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antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw
hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave
symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short
square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass
buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion
of the times, especially if they could procure an eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the
country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the
hair.
Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene,
having come to the gathering on his favorite steed
Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and
mischief, and which no one but himself could
manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious
animals, given to all kinds of tricks which kept the
rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a
tractable, well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of
spirit.
Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of
charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my
hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel's
mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with
their luxurious display of red and white; but the
ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table,
in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped up
platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable
kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives!
There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly
koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet
cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes,
and the whole family of cakes. And then there were
apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides
slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover
delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches,
and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad
and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk
and cream, all mingled higgledy- piggledy, pretty
much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly
teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst-Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to
discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager
to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was
not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample
justice to every dainty.
He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart
dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good
cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some
men's do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling
his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling
with the possibility that he might one day be lord of
all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and
splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he'd turn his
back upon the old schoolhouse; snap his fingers in
the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other
niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue
out of doors that should dare to call him comrade!
Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his
guests with a face dilated with content and good
humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His
hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being
confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the
shoulder, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to
"fall to, and help themselves."
And now the sound of the music from the common
room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician
was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the
itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than
half a century. His instrument was as old and battered
as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on
two or three strings, accompanying every movement
of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost
to the ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a
fresh couple were to start.
Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as
upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about
him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung
frame in full motion, and clattering about the room,
you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that
blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you
in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes;
who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the
farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid
of shining black faces at every door and window,
gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white
eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from
ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be
otherwise than animated and joyous? The lady of his
heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling
graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while
Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy,
sat brooding by himself in one corner.
When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted
to a knot of the sager folks, who, with Old Van
Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza,
gossiping over former times, and drawing out long
stories about the war.
This neighborhood, at the time of which I am
speaking, was one of those highly favored places
which abound with chronicle and great men. The
British and American line had run near it during the
war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding
and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of
border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to
enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little
becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his
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recollection, to make himself the hero of every
exploit.
patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his
horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.
There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large bluebearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British
frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud
breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth
discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall
be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly
mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being
an excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball
with a small sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt
it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt; in
proof of which he was ready at any time to show the
sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several
more that had been equally great in the field, not one
of whom but was persuaded that he had a
considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy
termination.
The sequestered situation of this church seems
always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled
spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locusttrees and lofty elms, from among which its decent,
whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like
Christian purity beaming through the shades of
retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver
sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between
which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the
Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where
the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would
think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.
On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell,
along which raves a large brook among broken rocks
and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of
the stream, not far from the church, was formerly
thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and
the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging
trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the
daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night.
Such was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless
Horseman, and the place where he was most
frequently encountered. The tale was told of old
Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how
he met the Horseman returning from his foray into
Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind
him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over
hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when
the Horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw
old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over
the tree-tops with a clap of thunder.
But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and
apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich
in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and
superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, longsettled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the
shifting throng that forms the population of most of
our country places. Besides, there is no
encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for
they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap
and turn themselves in their graves, before their
surviving friends have travelled away from the
neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to
walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to
call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so
seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established
Dutch communities.
The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of
supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless
owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a
contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted
region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and
fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy
Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as
usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful
legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral
trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and
seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major
André was taken, and which stood in the
neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the
woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven
Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights
before a storm, having perished there in the snow.
The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon
the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless
Horseman, who had been heard several times of late,
This story was immediately matched by a thrice
marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made
light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He
affirmed that on returning one night from the
neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been
overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had
offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and
should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin
horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church
bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of
fire.
All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with
which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the
listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam
from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of
Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts
from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added
many marvellous events that had taken place in his
native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which
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he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy
Hollow.
from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping
uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.
The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers
gathered together their families in their wagons, and
were heard for some time rattling along the hollow
roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels
mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and
their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter
of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands,
sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died
away,--and the late scene of noise and frolic was all
silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind,
according to the custom of country lovers, to have a
tête-à -tête with the heiress; fully convinced that
he was now on the high road to success. What passed
at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I
do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must
have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after
no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and
chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could
that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish
tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor
pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of
his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to
say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had
been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's
heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the
scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often
gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with
several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most
uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in
which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of
mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of
timothy and clover.
All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard
in the afternoon now came crowding upon his
recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the
stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving
clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had
never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover,
approaching the very place where many of the scenes
of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the
road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered
like a giant above all the other trees of the
neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its
limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to
form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost
to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was
connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate
André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and
was universally known by the name of Major
André's tree. The common people regarded it with
a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of
sympathy for the fate of its ill- starred namesake, and
partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful
lamentations, told concerning it.
It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod,
heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels
homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which
rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed
so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal
as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its
dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and
there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor
under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he
could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the
opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague
and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from
this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too,
the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally
awakened, would sound far, far off, from some
farmhouse away among the hills--but it was like a
dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred
near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a
cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog
As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to
whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was
but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry
branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought
he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the
tree: he paused and ceased whistling but, on looking
more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where
the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white
wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan--his teeth
chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it
was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another,
as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed
the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.
About two hundred yards from the tree, a small brook
crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thicklywooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's Swamp.
A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a
bridge over this stream. On that side of the road
where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks
and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines,
threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge
was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that
the unfortunate André was captured, and under the
covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy
yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever
since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful
are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it
alone after dark.
104
As he approached the stream, his heart began to
thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution,
gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and
attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but
instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal
made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against
the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the
delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked
lustily with the contrary foot: it was all in vain; his
steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to
the opposite side of the road into a thicket of
brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now
bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs
of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling
and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge,
with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider
sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy
tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive
ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on
the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge,
misshapen and towering. It stirred not, but seemed
gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster
ready to spring upon the traveller.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his
head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and
fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was
there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was,
which could ride upon the wings of the wind?
Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he
demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you?"
He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a
still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer.
Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible
Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with
involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the
shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and
with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the
middle of the road. Though the night was dark and
dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in
some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a
horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a
black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of
molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side
of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old
Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and
waywardness.
Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight
companion, and bethought himself of the adventure
of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now
quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind.
The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an
equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk,
thinking to lag behind,--the other did the same. His
heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to
resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove
to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a
stave. There was something in the moody and dogged
silence of this pertinacious companion that was
mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully
accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which
brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief
against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a
cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that
he was headless!--but his horror was still more
increased on observing that the head, which should
have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him
on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to
desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows
upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to
give his companion the slip; but the spectre started
full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through
thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at
every bound. Ichabod's flimsy garments fluttered in
the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over
his horse's head, in the eagerness of his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off to
Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed
possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it,
made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong
downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy
hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile,
where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story;
and just beyond swells the green knoll on which
stands the whitewashed church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful
rider an apparent advantage in the chase, but just as
he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of
the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from
under him. He seized it by the pommel, and
endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain; and had just
time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder
round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and
he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a
moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed
across his mind,--for it was his Sunday saddle; but
this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard
on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!) he
had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes
slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and
sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's
backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would
cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the
hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The
wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of
the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw
the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees
105
beyond. He recollected the place where Brom
Bones's ghostly competitor had disappeared. "If I can
but reach that bridge," thought Ichabod, "I am safe."
Just then he heard the black steed panting and
blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he
felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the
ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he
thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the
opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to
see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in
a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the
goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of
hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge
the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his
cranium with a tremendous crash,--he was tumbled
headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black
steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a
whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found without
his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly
cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did
not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour
came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the
schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the
brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now
began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor
Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot,
and after diligent investigation they came upon his
traces. In one part of the road leading to the church
was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks
of horses' hoofs deeply dented in the road, and
evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge,
beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the
brook, where the water ran deep and black, was
found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close
beside it a shattered pumpkin.
The brook was searched, but the body of the
schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van
Ripper as executor of his estate, examined the bundle
which contained all his worldly effects. They
consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the
neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings; an old pair
of corduroy small- clothes; a rusty razor; a book of
psalm tunes full of dog's-ears; and a broken pitchpipe. As to the books and furniture of the
schoolhouse, they belonged to the community,
excepting Cotton Mather's "History of Witchcraft," a
"New England Almanac," and a book of dreams and
fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap
much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless
attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the
heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the
poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames
by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward,
determined to send his children no more to school,
observing that he never knew any good come of this
same reading and writing. Whatever money the
schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his
quarter's pay but a day or two before, he must have
had about his person at the time of his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the
church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and
gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the
bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin
had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones,
and a whole budget of others were called to mind;
and when they had diligently considered them all,
and compared them with the symptoms of the present
case, they shook their heads, and came to the
conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the
Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in
nobody's debt, nobody troubled his head any more
about him; the school was removed to a different
quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned
in his stead.
It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New
York on a visit several years after, and from whom
this account of the ghostly adventure was received,
brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane
was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood
partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van
Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been
suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had
changed his quarters to a distant part of the country;
had kept school and studied law at the same time; had
been admitted to the bar; turned politician;
electioneered; written for the newspapers; and finally
had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court.
Brom Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival's
disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in
triumph to the altar, was observed to look
exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod
was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at
the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to
suspect that he knew more about the matter than he
chose to tell.
The old country wives, however, who are the best
judges of these matters, maintain to this day that
Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means;
and it is a favorite story often told about the
neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The
bridge became more than ever an object of
superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the
road has been altered of late years, so as to approach
the church by the border of the millpond. The
schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and
was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the
106
unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy, loitering
homeward of a still summer evening, has often
fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy
psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy
Hollow.
______________________________________
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Joyce Carol Oates
for Bob Dylan
Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a
quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to
glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces
to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who
noticed everything and knew everything and who
hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own
face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking
at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so
pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her
eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look
right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of
herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she
was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had
been pretty once too, if you could believe those old
snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone
and that was why she was always after Connie.
"Why don't you keep your room clean like your
sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the hell
stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using
that junk."
Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at
home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie
attended, and if that wasn't bad enough—with her in
the same building—she was so plain and chunky and
steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time
by her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this,
June did that, she saved money and helped clean the
house and cookedand Connie couldn't do a thing, her
mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their
father was away at work most of the time and when
he came home he wanted supper and he read the
newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed.
He didn't bother talking much to them, but around his
bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until
Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself
was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to
throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends.
She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made
everything she said sound a little forced, whether it
was sincere or not.
There was one good thing: June went places with girl
friends of hers, girls who were just as plain and
steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that
her mother had no objections. The father of Connie's
best girl friend drove the girls the three miles to town
and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk
through the stores or go to a movie, and when he
came to pick them up again at eleven he never
bothered to ask what they had done.
They must have been familiar sights, walking around
the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina
slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm
bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would
lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if
someone passed who amused or interested them.
Connie had long dark blond hair that drew anyone's
eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her
head and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall
down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey blouse
that looked one way when she was at home and
another way when she was away from home.
Everything about her had two sides to it, one for
home and one for anywhere that was not home: her
walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or
languid enough to make anyone think she was
hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was
pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and
pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was
cynical and drawling at home—"Ha, ha, very
funny,"—but highpitched and nervous anywhere else,
like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.
Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but
sometimes they went across the highway, ducking
fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant
where older kids hung out. The restaurant was shaped
like a big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle,
and on its cap was a revolving figure of a grinning
boy holding a hamburger aloft. One night in
midsummer they ran across, breathless with daring,
and right away someone leaned out a car window and
invited them over, but it was just a boy from high
school they didn't like. It made them feel good to be
able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of
parked and cruising cars to the bright-lit, fly-infested
restaurant, their faces pleased and expectant as if they
were entering a sacred building that loomed up out of
the night to give them what haven and blessing they
yearned for. They sat at the counter and crossed their
legs at the ankles, their thin shoulders rigid with
excitement, and listened to the music that made
everything so good: the music was always in the
background, like music at a church service; it was
something to depend upon.
107
A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat
backwards on his stool, turning himself jerkily
around in semicircles and then stopping and turning
back again, and after a while he asked Connie if she
would like something to eat. She said she would and
so she tapped her friend's arm on her way out—her
friend pulled her face up into a brave, droll look—
and Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across
the way. "I just hate to leave her like that," Connie
said earnestly, but the boy said that she wouldn't be
alone for long. So they went out to his car, and on the
way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander
over the windshields and faces all around her, her
face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with
Eddie or even this place; it might have been the
music. She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her
breath with the pure pleasure of being alive, and just
at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a
few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black
hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at
her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit
her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn't
help glancing back and there he was, still watching
her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said,
"Gonna get you, baby," and Connie turned away
again without Eddie noticing anything.
She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant
where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax
cups that were always sweating, and then down an
alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at
five to eleven only the movie house was still open at
the plaza. Her girl friend was there, talking with a
boy. When Connie came up, the two girls smiled at
each other and Connie said, "How was the movie?"
and the girl said, 'You should know." They rode off
with the girl's father, sleepy and pleased, and Connie
couldn't help but look back at the darkened shopping
plaza with its big empty parking lot and its signs that
were faded and ghostly now, and over at the drive-in
restaurant where cars were still circling tirelessly.
She couldn't hear the music at this distance.
Next morning June asked her how the movie was and
Connie said, "So-so."
She and that girl and occasionally another girl went
out several times a week, and the rest of the time
Connie spent around the house—it was summer
vacation—getting in her mother s way and thinking,
dreaming about the boys she met. But all the boys fell
back and dissolved into a single face that was not
even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the
urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid
night air of July. Connie's mother kept dragging her
back to the daylight by finding things for her to do or
saying suddenly, 'What's this about the Pettinger
girl?"
And Connie would say nervously, "Oh, her. That
dope." She always drew thick clear lines between
herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and
kind enough to believe it. Her mother was so simple,
Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so
much. Her mother went scuffling around the house in
old bedroom slippers and complained over the
telephone to one sister about the other, then the other
called up and the two of them complained about the
third one. If June's name was mentioned her mother's
tone was approving, and if Connie's name was
mentioned it was disapproving. This did not really
mean she disliked Connie, and actually Connie
thought that her mother preferred her to June just
because she was prettier, but the two of them kept up
a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were
tugging and struggling over something of little value
to either of them. Sometimes, over coffee, they were
almost friends, but something would come up—some
vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around
their heads—and their faces went hard with
contempt.
One Sunday Connie got up at eleven—none of them
bothered with church—and washed her hair so that it
could dry all day long in the sun. Her parents and
sister were going to a barbecue at an aunt's house and
Connie said no, she wasn't interested, rolling her eyes
to let her mother know just what she thought of it.
"Stay home alone then," her mother said sharply.
Connie sat out back in a lawn chair and watched
them drive away, her father quiet and bald, hunched
around so that he could back the car out, her mother
with a look that was still angry and not at all softened
through the windshield, and in the back seat poor old
June, all dressed up as if she didn't know what a
barbecue was, with all the running yelling kids and
the flies. Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun,
dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if
this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her
mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had
been with the night before and how nice he had been,
how sweet it always was, not the way someone like
June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was
in movies and promised in songs; and when she
opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the
back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of
trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and
still. The asbestos ranch house that was now three
years old startled her—it looked small. She shook her
head as if to get awake.
108
It was too hot. She went inside the house and turned
on the radio to drown out the quiet. She sat on the
edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour
and a half to a program called XYZ Sunday
Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking
songs she sang along with, interspersed by
exclamations from "Bobby King": "An' look here,
you girls at Napoleon's—Son and Charley want you
to pay real close attention to this song coming up!"
Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one
shoulder.
And Connie paid close attention herself, bathed in a
glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise
mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly
about the airless little room, breathed in and breathed
out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest.
After a while she heard a car coming up the drive.
She sat up at once, startled, because it couldn't be her
father so soon. The gravel kept crunching all the way
in from the road—the driveway was long—and
Connie ran to the window. It was a car she didn't
know. It was an open jalopy, painted a bright gold
that caught the sunlight opaquely. Her heart began to
pound and her fingers snatched at her hair, checking
it, and she whispered, "Christ. Christ," wondering
how bad she looked. The car came to a stop at the
side door and the horn sounded four short taps, as if
this were a signal Connie knew.
She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the
door.
She went into the kitchen and approached the door
slowly, then hung out the screen door, her bare toes
curling down off the step. There were two boys in the
car and now she recognized the driver: he had
shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig
and he was grinning at her.
"He's kind of great," Connie said reluctantly.
"I ain't late, am I?" he said.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Connie said.
"Don'tcha like my car? New paint job," he said.
"Hey."
"What?"
"You're cute."
"Don'tcha believe me, or what?" he said.
"Look, I don't even know who you are," Connie said
in disgust.
"Hey, Ellie's got a radio, see. Mine broke down." He
lifted his friend's arm and showed her the little
transistor radio the boy was holding, and now Connie
began to hear the music. It was the same program that
was playing inside the house.
"Bobby King?" she said.
"I listen to him all the time. I think he's great."
"Listen, that guy's great. He knows where the action
is."
Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it
impossible for her to see just what this boy was
looking at. She couldn't decide if she liked him or if
he was just a jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway
and wouldn't come down or go back inside. She said,
"What's all that stuff painted on your car?"
"Toldja I'd be out, didn't I?"
"I don't even know who you are."
She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or
pleasure, and he spoke in a fast, bright monotone.
Connie looked past him to the other boy, taking her
time. He had fair brown hair, with a lock that fell
onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce,
embarrassed look, but so far he hadn't even bothered
to glance at her. Both boys wore sunglasses. The
driver's glasses were metallic and mirrored
everything in miniature.
"You wanta come for a ride?" he said.
"Can'tcha read it?" He opened the door very
carefully, as if he were afraid it might fall off. He slid
out just as carefully, planting his feet firmly on the
ground, the tiny metallic world in his glasses slowing
down like gelatine hardening, and in the midst of it
Connie's bright green blouse. "This here is my name,
to begin with, he said. ARNOLD FRIEND was
written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a
drawing of a round, grinning face that reminded
Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses. "I
wanta introduce myself, I'm Arnold Friend and that's
my real name and I'm gonna be your friend, honey,
and inside the car's Ellie Oscar, he's kinda shy." Ellie
brought his transistor radio up to his shoulder and
balanced it there. "Now, these numbers are a secret
code, honey," Arnold Friend explained. He read off
109
the numbers 33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at her
to see what she thought of that, but she didn't think
much of it. The left rear fender had been smashed and
around it was written, on the gleaming gold
background: DONE BY CRAZY WOMAN
DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at that. Arnold Friend
was pleased at her laughter and looked up at her.
"Around the other side's a lot more —you wanta
come and see them?"
"It's Connie."
"No."
"Maybe and maybe not."
"I know my Connie," he said, wagging his finger.
Now she remembered him even better, back at the
restaurant, and her cheeks warmed at the thought of
how she had sucked in her breath just at the moment
she passed him—how she must have looked to him.
And he had remembered her. "Ellie and I come out
here especially for you," he said. "Ellie can sit in
back. How about it?"
"Why not?"
"Where?"
"Why should I?"
"Where what?"
"Don'tcha wanta see what's on the car? Don'tcha
wanta go for a ride?"
"Where're we going?"
"I don't know."
"Why not?"
"I got things to do."
He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she
saw how pale the skin around his eyes was, like holes
that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes
were like chips of broken glass that catch the light in
an amiable way. He smiled. It was as if the idea of
going for a ride somewhere, to someplace, was a new
idea to him.
"Like what?"
"Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart."
"Things."
"I never said my name was Connie," she said.
He laughed as if she had said something funny. He
slapped his thighs. He was standing in a strange way,
leaning back against the car as if he were balancing
himself. He wasn't tall, only an inch or so taller than
she would be if she came down to him. Connie liked
the way he was dressed, which was the way all of
them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black,
scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and
showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over shirt
that was a little soiled and showed the hard small
muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked as if he
probably did hard work, lifting and carrying things.
Even his neck looked muscular. And his face was a
familiar face, somehow: the jaw and chin and cheeks
slightly darkened because he hadn't shaved for a day
or two, and the nose long and hawklike, sniffing as if
she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was
all a joke.
"Connie, you ain't telling the truth. This is your day
set aside for a ride with me and you know it," he said,
still laughing. The way he straightened and recovered
from his fit of laughing showed that it had been all
fake.
"How do you know what my name is?" she said
suspiciously.
"But I know what it is. I know your name and all
about you, lots of things," Arnold Friend said. He had
not moved yet but stood still leaning back against the
side of his jalopy. "I took a special interest in you,
such a pretty girl, and found out all about you—like I
know your parents and sister are gone somewheres
and I know where and how long they're going to be
gone, and I know who you were with last night, and
your best girl friend's name is Betty. Right?"
He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he
were reciting the words to a song. His smile assured
her that everything was fine. In the car Ellie turned
up the volume on his radio and did not bother to look
around at them.
"Ellie can sit in the back seat," Arnold Friend said.
He indicated his friend with a casual jerk of his chin,
as if Ellie did not count and she should not bother
with him.
"How'd you find out all that stuff?" Connie said.
"Listen: Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy
Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger," he said in a chant.
"Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter—"
110
"Do you know all those kids?"
"I know everybody."
"Look, you're kidding. You're not from around here."
"Sure."
"But—how come we never saw you before?"
"Sure you saw me before," he said. He looked down
at his boots, as if he were a little offended. "You just
don't remember."
"I guess I'd remember you," Connie said.
"Yeah?" He looked up at this, beaming. He was
pleased. He began to mark time with the music from
Ellie's radio, tapping his fists lightly together. Connie
looked away from his smile to the car, which was
painted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look at it.
She looked at that name, ARNOLD FRIEND. And
up at the front fender was an expression that was
familiar—MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was an
expression kids had used the year before but didn't
use this year. She looked at it for a while as if the
words meant something to her that she did not yet
know.
"What're you thinking about? Huh?" Arnold Friend
demanded. "Not worried about your hair blowing
around in the car, are you?"
"No."
"Think I maybe can't drive good?"
"How do I know?"
"You're a hard girl to handle. How come?" he said.
"Don't you know I'm your friend? Didn't you see me
put my sign in the air when you walked by?"
"What sign?"
"My sign." And he drew an X in the air, leaning out
toward her. They were maybe ten feet apart. After his
hand fell back to his side the X was still in the air,
almost visible. Connie let the screen door close and
stood perfectly still inside it, listening to the music
from her radio and the boy's blend together. She
stared at Arnold Friend. He stood there so stiffly
relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one hand idly
on the door handle as if he were keeping himself up
that way and had no intention of ever moving again.
She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans
that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy
leather boots and the tight shirt, and even that
slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy
smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they
didn't want to put into words. She recognized all this
and also the singsong way he talked, slightly
mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy,
and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against
the other in homage to the perpetual music behind
him. But all these things did not come together.
She said suddenly, "Hey, how old are you?"
His smiled faded. She could see then that he wasn't a
kid, he was much older—thirty, maybe more. At this
knowledge her heart began to pound faster.
"That's a crazy thing to ask. Can'tcha see I'm your
own age?"
"Like hell you are."
"Or maybe a couple years older. I'm eighteen."
"Eighteen?" she said doubtfully.
He grinned to reassure her and lines appeared at the
corners of his mouth. His teeth were big and white.
He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she
saw how thick the lashes were, thick and black as if
painted with a black tarlike material. Then, abruptly,
he seemed to become embarrassed and looked over
his shoulder at Ellie. "Him, he's crazy," he said.
"Ain't he a riot? He's a nut, a real character." Ellie
was still listening to the music. His sunglasses told
nothing about what he was thinking. He wore a bright
orange shirt unbuttoned halfway to show his chest,
which was a pale, bluish chest and not muscular like
Arnold Friend's. His shirt collar was turned up all
around and the very tips of the collar pointed out past
his chin as if they were protecting him. He was
pressing the transistor radio up against his ear and sat
there in a kind of daze, right in the sun.
"He's kinda strange," Connie said.
"Hey, she says you're kinda strange! Kinda strange!"
Arnold Friend cried. He pounded on the car to get
Ellie's attention. Ellie turned for the first time and
Connie saw with shock that he wasn't a kid either—
he had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly
as if the veins grew too close to the surface of his
skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby. Connie felt a
wave of dizziness rise in her at this sight and she
111
stared at him as if waiting for something to change
the shock of the moment, make it all right again.
Ellie's lips kept shaping words, mumbling along with
the words blasting in his ear.
"What fat woman?" Connie cried.
"How do I know what fat woman, I don't know every
goddamn fat woman in the world!" Arnold Friend
laughed.
"Maybe you two better go away," Connie said faintly.
"What? How come?" Arnold Friend cried. "We come
out here to take you for a ride. It's Sunday." He had
the voice of the man on the radio now. It was the
same voice, Connie thought. "Don'tcha know it's
Sunday all day? And honey, no matter who you were
with last night, today you're with Arnold Friend and
don't you forget it! Maybe you better step out here,"
he said, and this last was in a different voice. It was a
little flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to him.
"No. I got things to do."
"Oh, that's Mrs. Hornsby . . . . Who invited her?"
Connie said. She felt a little lightheaded. Her breath
was coming quickly.
"Hey."
"You two better leave."
"We ain't leaving until you come with us."
"Like hell I am—"
"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean—I mean,
don't fool around," he said, shaking his head. He
laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on
top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed
wearing a wig, and brought the stems down behind
his ears. Connie stared at him, another wave of
dizziness and fear rising in her so that for a moment
he wasn't even in focus but was just a blur standing
there against his gold car, and she had the idea that he
had driven up the driveway all right but had come
from nowhere before that and belonged nowhere and
that everything about him and even about the music
that was so familiar to her was only half real.
"She's too fat. I don't like them fat. I like them the
way you are, honey," he said, smiling sleepily at her.
They stared at each other for a while through the
screen door. He said softly, "Now, what you're going
to do is this: you're going to come out that door. You
re going to sit up front with me and Ellie's going to
sit in the back, the hell with Ellie, right? This isn't
Ellie's date. You're my date. I'm your lover, honey."
"What? You're crazy—"
"Yes, I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but
you will," he said. "I know that too. I know all about
you. But look: it's real nice and you couldn't ask for
nobody better than me, or more polite. I always keep
my word. I'll tell you how it is, I'm always nice at
first, the first time. I'll hold you so tight you won't
think you have to try to get away or pretend anything
because you'll know you can't. And I'll come inside
you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and
you'll love me "
"He ain't coming. He's at a barbecue."
"Shut up! You're crazy!" Connie said. She backed
away from the door. She put her hands up against her
ears as if she'd heard something terrible, something
not meant for her. "People don't talk like that, you're
crazy," she muttered. Her heart was almost too big
now for her chest and its pumping made sweat break
out all over her. She looked out to see Arnold Friend
pause and then take a step toward the porch, lurching.
He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he
managed to catch his balance. He wobbled in his high
boots and grabbed hold of one of the porch posts.
"Honey?" he said. "You still listening?"
"How do you know that?"
"Get the hell out of here!"
"Aunt Tillie's. Right now they're uh—they're
drinking. Sitting around," he said vaguely, squinting
as if he were staring all the way to town and over to
Aunt Tillie's back yard. Then the vision seemed to
get clear and he nodded energetically. "Yeah. Sitting
around. There's your sister in a blue dress, huh? And
high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you,
sweetheart! And your mother's helping some fat
woman with the corn, they're cleaning the corn—
husking the corn—"
"Be nice, honey. Listen."
"If my father comes and sees you—"
"I'm going to call the police—"
He wobbled again and out of the side of his mouth
came a fast spat curse, an aside not meant for her to
hear. But even this "Christ!" sounded forced. Then he
began to smile again. She watched this smile come,
awkward as if he were smiling from inside a mask.
His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly,
tanned down to his throat but then running out as if
112
he had plastered make-up on his face but had
forgotten about his throat.
"Honey—? Listen, here's how it is. I always tell the
truth and I promise you this: I ain't coming in that
house after you."
"You better not! I'm going to call the police if you—
if you don't—"
"Honey," he said, talking right through her voice,
"honey, I m not coming in there but you are coming
out here. You know why?"
She was panting. The kitchen looked like a place she
had never seen before, some room she had run inside
but that wasn't good enough, wasn't going to help her.
The kitchen window had never had a curtain, after
three years, and there were dishes in the sink for her
to do—probably—and if you ran your hand across
the table you'd probably feel something sticky there.
"You listening, honey? Hey?" "—going to call the
police—"
"But my father's coming back. He's coming to get
me. I had to wash my hair first—'' She spoke in a dry,
rapid voice, hardly raising it for him to hear.
"No, your daddy is not coming and yes, you had to
wash your hair and you washed it for me. It's nice
and shining and all for me. I thank you sweetheart,"
he said with a mock bow, but again he almost lost his
balance. He had to bend and adjust his boots.
Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the
boots must have been stuffed with something so that
he would seem taller. Connie stared out at him and
behind him at Ellie in the car, who seemed to be
looking off toward Connie's right, into nothing. This
Ellie said, pulling the words out of the air one after
another as if he were just discovering them, "You
want me to pull out the phone?"
"Shut your mouth and keep it shut," Arnold Friend
said, his face red from bending over or maybe from
embarrassment because Connie had seen his boots.
"This ain't none of your business."
"Soon as you touch the phone I don't need to keep my
promise and can come inside. You won't want that."
She rushed forward and tried to lock the door. Her
fingers were shaking. "But why lock it," Arnold
Friend said gently, talking right into her face. "It's
just a screen door. It's just nothing." One of his boots
was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in it. It
pointed out to the left, bent at the ankle. "I mean,
anybody can break through a screen door and glass
and wood and iron or anything else if he needs to,
anybody at all, and specially Arnold Friend. If the
place got lit up with a fire, honey, you'd come runnin'
out into my arms, right into my arms an' safe at
home—like you knew I was your lover and'd stopped
fooling around. I don't mind a nice shy girl but I don't
like no fooling around." Part of those words were
spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and Connie
somehow recognized them—the echo of a song from
last year, about a girl rushing into her boy friend's
arms and coming home again—
"What—what are you doing? What do you want?"
Connie said. "If I call the police they'll get you,
they'll arrest you—"
Connie stood barefoot on the linoleum floor, staring
at him. "What do you want?" she whispered.
"Huh? What're you saying, honey?"
"I want you," he said.
"What?"
"Seen you that night and thought, that's the one, yes
sir. I never needed to look anymore."
"Promise was not to come in unless you touch that
phone, and I'll keep that promise," he said. He
resumed his erect position and tried to force his
shoulders back. He sounded like a hero in a movie,
declaring something important. But he spoke too
loudly and it was as if he were speaking to someone
behind Connie. "I ain't made plans for coming in that
house where I don't belong but just for you to come
out to me, the way you should. Don't you know who I
am?"
"You're crazy," she whispered. She backed away
from the door but did not want to go into another part
of the house, as if this would give him permission to
come through the door. "What do you . . . you're
crazy, you. . . ."
Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could
not remember what it was, this room.
"This is how it is, honey: you come out and we'll
drive away, have a nice ride. But if you don't come
out we're gonna wait till your people come home and
then they're all going to get it."
113
"You want that telephone pulled out?" Ellie said. He
held the radio away from his ear and grimaced, as if
without the radio the air was too much for him.
"I toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you're
deaf, get a hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up. This
little girl's no trouble and's gonna be nice to me, so
Ellie keep to yourself, this ain't your date right? Don't
hem in on me, don't hog, don't crush, don't bird dog,
don't trail me," he said in a rapid, meaningless voice,
as if he were running through all the expressions he'd
learned but was no longer sure which of them was in
style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up
with his eyes closed. "Don't crawl under my fence,
don't squeeze in my chipmonk hole, don't sniff my
glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers
on yourself!" He shaded his eyes and peered in at
Connie, who was backed against the kitchen table.
"Don't mind him, honey, he's just a creep. He's a
dope. Right? I'm the boy for you, and like I said, you
come out here nice like a lady and give me your
hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice
old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your
sister in her high heels. Because listen: why bring
them in this?"
"Leave me alone," Connie whispered.
"Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the
one with the chickens and stuff—you know her?"
"She's dead!"
"Dead? What? You know her?" Arnold Friend said.
"She's dead—"
"Don't you like her?"
"She's dead—she's—she isn't here any more—"
But don't you like her, I mean, you got something
against her? Some grudge or something?" Then his
voice dipped as if he were conscious of a rudeness.
He touched the sunglasses perched up on top of his
head as if to make sure they were still there. "Now,
you be a good girl."
'What are you going to do?"
"Just two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend
said. "But I promise it won't last long and you'll like
me the way you get to like people you're close to.
You will. It's all over for you here, so come on out.
You don't want your people in any trouble, do you?"
She turned and bumped against a chair or something,
hurting her leg, but she ran into the back room and
picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear,
a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she
could do nothing but listen to it—the telephone was
clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down
to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to
scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out,
she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start
jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were
something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again
and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful
wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside
it the way she was locked inside this house.
After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on
the floor with her wet back against the wall.
Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a
good girl. Put the phone back."
She kicked the phone away from her.
"No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."
She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone
stopped.
"That's a good girl. Now, you come outside."
She was hollow with what had been fear but what
was now just an emptiness. All that screaming had
blasted it out of her. She sat, one leg cramped under
her, and deep inside her brain was something like a
pinpoint of light that kept going and would not let her
relax. She thought, I'm not going to see my mother
again. She thought, I'm not going to sleep in my bed
again. Her bright green blouse was all wet.
Arnold Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was
like a stage voice, "The place where you came from
ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to
go is cancelled out. This place you are now—inside
your daddy's house—is nothing but a cardboard box I
can knock down any time. You know that and always
did know it. You hear me?"
She thought, I have got to think. I have got to know
what to do.
"We'll go out to a nice field, out in the country here
where it smells so nice and it's sunny," Arnold Friend
said. "I'll have my arms tight around you so you
won't need to try to get away and I'll show you what
love is like, what it does. The hell with this house! It
looks solid all right," he said. He ran a fingernail
114
down the screen and the noise did not make Connie
shiver, as it would have the day before. "Now, put
your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels
solid too but we know better. Be nice to me, be sweet
like you can because what else is there for a girl like
you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?—and get
away before her people come back?"
She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to
enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life
that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to
her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this body
that wasn't really hers either.
"You don't want them to get hurt," Arnold Friend
went on. "Now, get up, honey. Get up all by
yourself."
She stood.
"Now, turn this way. That's right. Come over here to
me.—Ellie, put that away, didn't I tell you? You
dope. You miserable creepy dope," Arnold Friend
said. His words were not angry but only part of an
incantation. The incantation was kindly. "Now come
out through the kitchen to me, honey, and let's see a
smile, try it, you re a brave, sweet little girl and now
they're eating corn and hot dogs cooked to bursting
over an outdoor fire, and they don't know one thing
about you and never did and honey, you're better than
them because not a one of them would have done this
for you."
Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool.
She brushed her hair back out of her eyes. Arnold
Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his
arms for her, his elbows pointing in toward each
other and his wrists limp, to show that this was an
embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn't
want to make her self-conscious.
She put out her hand against the screen. She watched
herself push the door slowly open as if she were back
safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this
body and this head of long hair moving out into the
sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.
"My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said in a halfsung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes
but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit
reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of
him—so much land that Connie had never seen
before and did not recognize except to know that she
was going to it.
_______________________________________
The Looking Glass
Anton Chekhov
NEW YEAR'S EVE. Nellie, the daughter of a
landowner and general, a young and pretty girl,
dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting
in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes
into the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and as
motionless as the looking-glass.
The non-existent but apparent vista of a long, narrow
corridor with endless rows of candles, the reflection
of her face, her hands, of the frame -- all this was
already clouded in mist and merged into a boundless
grey sea. The sea was undulating, gleaming and now
and then flaring crimson. . . .
Looking at Nellie's motionless eyes and parted lips,
one could hardly say whether she was asleep or
awake, but nevertheless she was seeing. At first she
saw only the smile and soft, charming expression of
someone's eyes, then against the shifting grey
background there gradually appeared the outlines of a
head, a face, eyebrows, beard. It was he, the destined
one, the object of long dreams and hopes. The
destined one was for Nellie everything, the
significance of life, personal happiness, career, fate.
Outside him, as on the grey background of the
looking-glass, all was dark, empty, meaningless. And
so it was not strange that, seeing before her a
handsome, gently smiling face, she was conscious of
bliss, of an unutterably sweet dream that could not be
expressed in speech or on paper. Then she heard his
voice, saw herself living under the same roof with
him, her life merged into his. Months and years flew
by against the grey background. And Nellie saw her
future distinctly in all its details.
Picture followed picture against the grey background.
Now Nellie saw herself one winter night knocking at
the door of Stepan Lukitch, the district doctor. The
old dog hoarsely and lazily barked behind the gate.
The doctor's windows were in darkness. All was
silence.
"For God's sake, for God's sake!" whispered Nellie.
But at last the garden gate creaked and Nellie saw the
doctor's cook.
"Is the doctor at home?"
"His honour's asleep," whispered the cook into her
sleeve, as though afraid of waking her master.
"He's only just got home from his fever patients, and
gave orders he was not to be waked."
115
But Nellie scarcely heard the cook. Thrusting her
aside, she rushed headlong into the doctor's house.
Running through some dark and stuffy rooms,
upsetting two or three chairs, she at last reached the
doctor's bedroom. Stepan Lukitch was lying on his
bed, dressed, but without his coat, and with pouting
lips was breathing into his open hand. A little nightlight glimmered faintly beside him. Without uttering
a word Nellie sat down and began to cry. She wept
bitterly, shaking all over.
"My husband is ill!" she sobbed out. Stepan Lukitch
was silent. He slowly sat up, propped his head on his
hand, and looked at his visitor with fixed, sleepy
eyes. "My husband is ill!" Nellie continued,
restraining her sobs. "For mercy's sake come quickly.
Make haste. . . . Make haste!"
"Eh?" growled the doctor, blowing into his hand.
"Come! Come this very minute! Or . . . it's terrible to
think! For mercy's sake!"
And pale, exhausted Nellie, gasping and swallowing
her tears, began describing to the doctor her
husband's illness, her unutterable terror. Her
sufferings would have touched the heart of a stone,
but the doctor looked at her, blew into his open hand,
and -- not a movement.
"I'll come to-morrow!" he muttered.
"That's impossible!" cried Nellie. "I know my
husband has typhus! At once . . . this very minute you
are needed!"
"I . . . er . . . have only just come in," muttered the
doctor. "For the last three days I've been away, seeing
typhus patients, and I'm exhausted and ill myself. . . .
I simply can't! Absolutely! I've caught it myself!
There!"
And the doctor thrust before her eyes a clinical
thermometer.
"My temperature is nearly forty. . . . I absolutely
can't. I can scarcely sit up. Excuse me. I'll lie down. .
. ."
The doctor lay down.
"But I implore you, doctor," Nellie moaned in
despair. "I beseech you! Help me, for mercy's sake!
Make a great effort and come! I will repay you,
doctor!"
"Oh, dear! . . . Why, I have told you already. Ah!"
Nellie leapt up and walked nervously up and down
the bedroom. She longed to explain to the doctor, to
bring him to reason. . . . She thought if only he knew
how dear her husband was to her and how unhappy
she was, he would forget his exhaustion and his
illness. But how could she be eloquent enough?
"Go to the Zemstvo doctor," she heard Stepan
Lukitch's voice.
"That's impossible! He lives more than twenty miles
from here, and time is precious. And the horses can't
stand it. It is thirty miles from us to you, and as much
from here to the Zemstvo doctor. No, it's impossible!
Come along, Stepan Lukitch. I ask of you an heroic
deed. Come, perform that heroic deed! Have pity on
us!"
"It's beyond everything. . . . I'm in a fever. . . my
head's in a whirl . . . and she won't understand! Leave
me alone!"
"But you are in duty bound to come! You cannot
refuse to come! It's egoism! A man is bound to
sacrifice his life for his neighbour, and you. . . you
refuse to come! I will summon you before the Court."
Nellie felt that she was uttering a false and
undeserved insult, but for her husband's sake she was
capable of forgetting logic, tact, sympathy for others.
. . . In reply to her threats, the doctor greedily gulped
a glass of cold water. Nellie fell to entreating and
imploring like the very lowest beggar. . . . At last the
doctor gave way. He slowly got up, puffing and
panting, looking for his coat.
"Here it is!" cried Nellie, helping him. "Let me put it
on to you. Come along! I will repay you. . . . All my
life I shall be grateful to you. . . ."
But what agony! After putting on his coat the doctor
lay down again. Nellie got him up and dragged him
to the hall. Then there was an agonizing to-do over
his goloshes, his overcoat. . . . His cap was lost. . . .
But at last Nellie was in the carriage with the doctor.
Now they had only to drive thirty miles and her
husband would have a doctor's help. The earth was
wrapped in darkness. One could not see one's hand
before one's face. . . . A cold winter wind was
blowing. There were frozen lumps under their
wheels. The coachman was continually stopping and
wondering which road to take.
116
Nellie and the doctor sat silent all the way. It was
fearfully jolting, but they felt neither the cold nor the
jolts.
"Get on, get on!" Nellie implored the driver.
At five in the morning the exhausted horses drove
into the yard. Nellie saw the familiar gates, the well
with the crane, the long row of stables and barns. At
last she was at home.
"Wait a moment, I will be back directly," she said to
Stepan Lukitch, making him sit down on the sofa in
the dining-room. "Sit still and wait a little, and I'll see
how he is going on."
On her return from her husband, Nellie found the
doctor lying down. He was lying on the sofa and
muttering.
"Doctor, please! . . . doctor!"
She saw the coffin, the candles, the deacon, and even
the footmarks in the hall made by the undertaker.
"Why is it, what is it for?" she asked, looking blankly
at her husband's face.
And all the previous life with her husband seemed to
her a stupid prelude to this.
Something fell from Nellie's hand and knocked on
the floor. She started, jumped up, and opened her
eyes wide. One looking-glass she saw lying at her
feet. The other was standing as before on the table.
She looked into the looking-glass and saw a pale,
tear-stained face. There was no grey background
now.
"I must have fallen asleep," she thought with a sigh
of relief.
_______________________________________
A Telephone Call
Dorothy Parker
"Eh? Ask Domna!" muttered Stepan Lukitch.
"What?"
"They said at the meeting . . . Vlassov said . . . Who?
. . . what?"
And to her horror Nellie saw that the doctor was as
delirious as her husband. What was to be done?
"I must go for the Zemstvo doctor," she decided.
Then again there followed darkness, a cutting cold
wind, lumps of frozen earth. She was suffering in
body and in soul, and delusive nature has no arts, no
deceptions to compensate these sufferings. . . .
Then she saw against the grey background how her
husband every spring was in straits for money to pay
the interest for the mortgage to the bank. He could
not sleep, she could not sleep, and both racked their
brains till their heads ached, thinking how to avoid
being visited by the clerk of the Court.
She saw her children: the everlasting apprehension of
colds, scarlet fever, diphtheria, bad marks at school,
separation. Out of a brood of five or six one was sure
to die.
The grey background was not untouched by death.
That might well be. A husband and wife cannot die
simultaneously. Whatever happened one must bury
the other. And Nellie saw her husband dying. This
terrible event presented itself to her in every detail.
PLEASE, God, let him telephone me now. Dear God,
let him call me now. I won't ask anything else of
You, truly I won't. It isn't very much to ask. It would
be so little to You, God, such a little, little thing.
Only let him telephone now. Please, God. Please,
please, please.
If I didn't think about it, maybe the telephone might
ring. Sometimes it does that. If I could think of
something else. If I could think of something else.
Knobby if I counted five hundred by fives, it might
ring by that time. I'll count slowly. I won't cheat. And
if it rings when I get to three hundred, I won't stop; I
won't answer it until I get to five hundred. Five, ten,
fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty,
forty-five, fifty.... Oh, please ring. Please.
This is the last time I'll look at the clock. I will not
look at it again. It's ten minutes past seven. He said
he would telephone at five o'clock. "I'll call you at
five, darling." I think that's where he said "darling."
I'm almost sure he said it there. I know he called me
"darling" twice, and the other time was when he said
good-by. "Good-by, darling." He was busy, and he
can't say much in the office, but he called me
"darling" twice. He couldn't have minded my calling
him up. I know you shouldn't keep telephoning them-I know they don't like that. When you do that they
know you are thinking about them and wanting them,
and that makes them hate you. But I hadn't talked to
him in three days-not in three days. And all I did was
ask him how he was; it was just the way anybody
117
might have called him up. He couldn't have minded
that. He couldn't have thought I was bothering him.
"No, of course you're not," he said. And he said he'd
telephone me. He didn't have to say that. I didn't ask
him to, truly I didn't. I'm sure I didn't. I don't think he
would say he'd telephone me, and then just never do
it. Please don't let him do that, God. Please don't.
"I'll call you at five, darling." "Good-by, darling.,' He
was busy, and he was in a hurry, and there were
people around him, but he called me "darling" twice.
That's mine, that's mine. I have that, even if I never
see him again. Oh, but that's so little. That isn't
enough. Nothing's enough, if I never see him again.
Please let me see him again, God. Please, I want him
so much. I want him so much. I'll be good, God. I
will try to be better, I will, If you will let me see him
again. If You will let him telephone me. Oh, let him
telephone me now.
Ah, don't let my prayer seem too little to You, God.
You sit up there, so white and old, with all the angels
about You and the stars slipping by. And I come to
You with a prayer about a telephone call. Ah, don't
laugh, God. You see, You don't know how it feels.
You're so safe, there on Your throne, with the blue
swirling under You. Nothing can touch You; no one
can twist Your heart in his hands. This is suffering,
God, this is bad, bad suffering. Won't You help me?
For Your Son's sake, help me. You said You would
do whatever was asked of You in His name. Oh, God,
in the name of Thine only beloved Son, Jesus Christ,
our Lord, let him telephone me now.
I must stop this. I mustn't be this way. Look. Suppose
a young man says he'll call a girl up, and then
something happens, and he doesn't. That isn't so
terrible, is it? Why, it's going on all over the world,
right this minute. Oh, what do I care what's going on
all over the world? Why can't that telephone ring?
Why can't it, why can't it? Couldn't you ring? Ah,
please, couldn't you? You damned, ugly, shiny thing.
It would hurt you to ring, wouldn't it? Oh, that would
hurt you. Damn you, I'll pull your filthy roots out of
the wall, I'll smash your smug black face in little bits.
Damn you to hell.
No, no, no. I must stop. I must think about something
else. This is what I'll do. I'll put the clock in the other
room. Then I can't look at it. If I do have to look at it,
then I'll have to walk into the bedroom, and that will
be something to do. Maybe, before I look at it again,
he will call me. I'll be so sweet to him, if he calls me.
If he says he can't see me tonight, I'll say, "Why,
that's all right, dear. Why, of course it's all right." I'll
be the way I was when I first met him. Then maybe
he'll like me again. I was always sweet, at first. Oh,
it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love
them.
I think he must still like me a little. He couldn't have
called me "darling" twice today, if he didn't still like
me a little. It isn't all gone, if he still likes me a little;
even if it's only a little, little bit. You see, God, if
You would just let him telephone me, I wouldn't have
to ask You anything more. I would be sweet to him, I
would be gay, I would be just the way I used to be,
and then he would love me again. And then I would
never have to ask You for anything more. Don't You
see, God? So won't You please let him telephone me?
Won't You please, please, please?
Are You punishing me, God, because I've been bad?
Are You angry with me because I did that? Oh, but,
God, there are so many bad people --You could not
be hard only to me. And it wasn't very bad; it couldn't
have been bad. We didn't hurt anybody, God. Things
are only bad when they hurt people. We didn't hurt
one single soul; You know that. You know it wasn't
bad, don't You, God? So won't You let him telephone
me now?
If he doesn't telephone me, I'll know God is angry
with me. I'll count five hundred by fives, and if he
hasn't called me then, I will know God isn't going to
help me, ever again. That will be the sign. Five, ten,
fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty,
forty-five, fifty, fifty-five. . . It was bad. I knew it
was bad. All right, God, send me to hell. You think
You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You?
You think. Your hell is worse than mine.
I mustn't. I mustn't do this. Suppose he's a little late
calling me up --that's nothing to get hysterical about.
Maybe he isn't going to call--maybe he's coming
straight up here without telephoning. He'll be cross if
he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry.
He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I
wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and
feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I
wish I could hurt him like hell.
He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even
knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know,
without my telling him. They don't like you to tell
them they've made you cry. They don't like you to
tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do,
they think you're possessive and exacting. And then
they hate you. They hate you whenever you say
anything you really think. You always have to keep
playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to;
I thought this was so big I could say whatever I
118
meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever
anything big enough for that. Oh, if he would just
telephone, I wouldn't tell him I had been sad about
him. They hate sad people. I would be so sweet and
so gay, he couldn't help but like me. If he would only
telephone. If he would only telephone.
Maybe that's what he is doing. Maybe he is coming
on here without calling me up. Maybe he's on his way
now. Something might have happened to him. No,
nothing could ever happen to him. I can't picture
anything happening to him. I never picture him run
over. I never see him lying still and long and dead. I
wish he were dead. That's a terrible wish. That's a
lovely wish. If he were dead, he would be mine. If he
were dead, I would never think of now and the last
few weeks. I would remember only the lovely times.
It would be all beautiful. I wish he were dead. I wish
he were dead, dead, dead.
This is silly. It's silly to go wishing people were dead
just because they don't call you up the very minute
they said they would. Maybe the clock's fast; I don't
know whether it's right. Maybe he's hardly late at all.
Anything could have made him a little late. Maybe he
had to stay at his office. Maybe he went home, to call
me up from there, and somebody came in. He doesn't
like to telephone me in front of people. Maybe he's
worried, just a little, little bit, about keeping me
waiting. He might even hope that I would call him
up. I could do that. I could telephone him.
I mustn't. I mustn't, I mustn't. Oh, God, please don't
let me telephone him. Please keep me from doing
that. I know, God, just as well as You do, that if he
were worried about me, he'd telephone no matter
where he was or how many people there were around
him. Please make me know that, God. I don't ask
YOU to make it easy for me--You can't do that, for
all that You could make a world. Only let me know
it, God. Don't let me go on hoping. Don't let me say
comforting things to myself. Please don't let me hope,
dear God. Please don't.
I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again
as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him
up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it
myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows
where I ram. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure
of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon
as they are sure of you. I should think it would be so
sweet to be sure.
It would be so easy to telephone him. Then I'd know.
Maybe it wouldn't be a foolish thing to do. Maybe he
wouldn't mind. Maybe he'd like it. Maybe he has
been trying to get me. Sometimes people try and try
to get you on the telephone, and they say the number
doesn't answer. I'm not just saying that to help
myself; that really happens. You know that really
happens, God. Oh, God, keep me away from that
telephone. Keep me away. Let me still have just a
little bit of pride. I think I'm going to need it, God. I
think it will be all I'll have.
Oh, what does pride matter, when I can't stand it if I
don't talk to him? Pride like that is such a silly,
shabby little thing. The real pride, the big pride, is in
having no pride. I'm not saying that just because I
want to call him. I am not. That's true, I know that's
true. I will be big. I will be beyond little prides.
Please, God, keep me from, telephoning him. Please,
God.
I don't see what pride has to do with it. This is such a
little thing, for me to be bringing in pride, for me to
be making such a fuss about. I may have
misunderstood him. Maybe he said for me to call him
up, at five. "Call me at five, darling." He could have
said that, perfectly well. It's so possible that I didn't
hear him right. "Call me at five, darling." I'm almost
sure that's what he said. God, don't let me talk this
way to myself. Make me know, please make me
know.
I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I
could sit still. If I could sit still. Maybe I could read.
Oh, all the books are about people who love each
other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write
about that for? Don't they know it isn't tree? Don't
they know it's a lie, it's a God damned lie? What do
they have to tell about that for, when they know how
it hurts? Damn them, damn them, damn them.
I won't. I'll be quiet. This is nothing to get excited
about. Look. Suppose he were someone I didn't know
very well. Suppose he were another girl. Then I d just
telephone and say, "Well, for goodness' sake, what
happened to you?" That's what I'd do, and I'd never
even think about it. Why can't I be casual and natural,
just because I love him? I can be. Honestly, I can be.
I'll call him up, and be so easy and pleasant. You see
if I won't, God. Oh, don't let me call him. Don't,
don't, don't.
God, aren't You really going to let him call me? Are
You sure, God? Couldn't You please relent? Couldn't
You? I don't even ask You to let him telephone me
this minute, God; only let him do it in a little while.
I'll count five hundred by fives. I'll do it so slowly
and so fairly. If he hasn't telephoned then, I'll call
119
him. I will. Oh, please, dear God, dear kind God, my
blessed Father in Heaven, let him call before then.
Please, God. Please.
Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twentyfive, thirty, thirtyfive.…
___________________________________________
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern
Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty
feet below. The man's hands were behind his back,
the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely
encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout crosstimber above his head and the slack fell to the level
of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the
sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied
a footing for him and his executioners--two private
soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant
who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a
short remove upon the same temporary platform was
an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a
captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood
with his rifle in the position known as "support," that
is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the
hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across
the chest--a formal and unnatural position, enforcing
an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be
the duty of these two men to know what was
occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely
blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that
traversed it. Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was
in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest
for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view.
Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The
other bank of the stream was open ground--a gentle
acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree
trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure
through which protruded the muzzle of a brass
cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope
between the bridge and fort were the spectators--a
single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest,"
the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels
inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder,
the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant stood
at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the
ground, his left hand resting upon his right.
Excepting the group of four at the center of the
bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the
bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels,
facing the banks of the stream, might have been
statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with
folded arms, silent, observing the work of his
subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a
dignitary who when he comes announced is to be
received with formal manifestations of respect, even
by those most familiar with him. In the code of
military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of
deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was
apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a
civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was
that of a planter. His features were good--a straight
nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his
long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling
behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock
coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no
whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had
a kindly expression which one would hardly have
expected in one whose neck was in the hemp.
Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal
military code makes provision for hanging many
kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private
soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank
upon which he had been standing. The sergeant
turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself
immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved
apart one pace. These movements left the condemned
man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the
same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of
the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood
almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank
had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it
was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal
from the former the latter would step aside, the plank
would tilt and the condemned man go down between
two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his
judgment as simple and effective. His face had not
been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a
moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze
wander to the swirling water of the stream racing
madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood
caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the
current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a
sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts
upon his wife and children. The water, touched to
gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the
banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the
soldiers, the piece of drift--all had distracted him.
And now he became conscious of a new disturbance.
Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a
sound which he could neither ignore nor understand,
a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of
a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the
same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and
whether immeasurably distant or nearby--it seemed
120
both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the
tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with
impatience and--he knew not why--apprehension.
The intervals of silence grew progressively longer,
the delays became maddening. With their greater
infrequency the sounds increased in strength and
sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife;
he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the
ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below
him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might
throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By
diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming
vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get
away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside
their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the
invader's farthest advance."
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man,
"and are getting ready for another advance. They
have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order
and built a stockade on the north bank. The
commandant has issued an order, which is posted
everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught
interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or
trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar
asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad,
and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in
words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain
rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the
sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
"Suppose a man--a civilian and student of hanging-should elude the picket post and perhaps get the
better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what
could he accomplish?"
II
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he
replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had
lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the
wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry
and would burn like tow."
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old
and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave
owner and like other slave owners a politician he was
naturally an original secessionist and ardently
devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an
imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate
here, had prevented him from taking service with the
gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns
ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under
the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his
energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity
for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come,
as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what
he could. No service was too humble for him to
perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous
for him to undertake if consistent with the character
of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in
good faith and without too much qualification
assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous
dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting
on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a
gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a
drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only toe, happy to
serve him with her own white hands. While she was
fetching the water her husband approached the dusty
horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the
front.
The lady had now brought the water, which the
soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed
to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after
nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward
in the direction from which he had come. He was a
Federal scout.
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through
the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one
already dead. From this state he was awakened--ages
later, it seemed to him--by the pain of a sharp
pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of
suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot
from his neck downward through every fiber of his
body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along
well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an
inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like
streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable
temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of
nothing but a feeling of fullness--of congestion.
These sensations were unaccompanied by thought.
The intellectual part of his nature was already
effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was
torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed
in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the
fiery heart, without material substance, he swung
121
through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast
pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness,
the light about him shot upward with the noise of a
loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all
was cold and dark. The power of thought was
restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he
had fallen into the stream. There was no additional
strangulation; the noose about his neck was already
suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To
die of hanging at the bottom of a river!--the idea
seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the
darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but
how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking,
for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a
mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten,
and he knew that he was rising toward the surface-knew it with reluctance, for he was now very
comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he
thought? "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be
shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in
his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his
hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler
might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in
the outcome. What splendid effort!--what
magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was
a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms
parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on
each side in the growing light. He watched them with
a new interest as first one and then the other pounced
upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and
thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling
those of a water snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He
thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the
undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the
direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck
ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which
had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to
force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was
racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish!
But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the
command. They beat the water vigorously with
quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface.
He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the
sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a
supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a
great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a
shriek!
He was now in full possession of his physical senses.
They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert.
Something in the awful disturbance of his organic
system had so exalted and refined them that they
made record of things never before perceived. He felt
the ripples upon his face and heard their separate
sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the
bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the
leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very
insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied
flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig
to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the
dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The
humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of
the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the
strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had
lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish
slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of
its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream;
in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel
slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw
the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the
captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his
executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue
sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him.
The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the
others were unarmed. Their movements were
grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something
struck the water smartly within a few inches of his
head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a
second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his
rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke
rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the
eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own
through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was
a grey eye and remembered having read that grey
eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had
them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him
half round; he was again looking into the forest on
the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high
voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind
him and came across the water with a distinctness
that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the
beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier,
he had frequented camps enough to know the dread
significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated
chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in
the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly--with
what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and
enforcing tranquility in the men--with what
accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words:
"Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! .
. . Aim! . . . Fire!"
Farquhar dived--dived as deeply as he could. The
122
water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet
he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising
again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal,
singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward.
Some of them touched him on the face and hands,
then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged
between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably
warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw
that he had been a long time under water; he was
perceptibly farther downstream nearer to safety. The
soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal
ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they
were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and
thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired
again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he
was now swimming vigorously with the current. His
brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he
thought with the rapidity of lightning.
The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that
martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a
volley as a single shot. He has probably already given
the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot
dodge them all!"
advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick.
In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the
foot of the left bank of the stream--the southern bank-and behind a projecting point which concealed him
from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion,
the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel,
restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his
fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in
handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like
diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing
beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon
the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite
order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of
their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through
the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in
their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no
wish to perfect his escape--was content to remain in
that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches
high above his head roused him from his dream. The
baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell.
He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and
plunged into the forest.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next
time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my
eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me--the
report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That
is a good gun."
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the
rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable;
nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a
woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in
so wild a region. There was something uncanny in
the revelation. By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore,
famishing. The thought of his wife and children
urged him on. At last he found a road which led him
in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as
wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed
untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling
anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog
suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the
trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating
on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in
perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this
rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking
unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He
was sure they were arranged in some order which had
a secret and malign significance. The wood on either
side was full of singular noises, among which--once,
twice, and again--he distinctly heard whispers in an
unknown tongue.
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round-spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests,
the now distant bridge, fort and men--all were
commingled and blurred. Objects were represented
by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of
color--that was all he saw. He had been caught in a
vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it
horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black
where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt
congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue
was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by
thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the
cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the
An appalling plash within two yards of him was
followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo,
which seemed to travel back through the air to the
fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very
river to its deeps!
A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down
upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon
had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head
free from the commotion of the smitten water he
heard the deflected shot humming through the air
ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing
the branches in the forest beyond.
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untraveled avenue--he could no longer feel the
roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep
while walking, for now he sees another scene-perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He
stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it,
and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine.
He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes
open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he
sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking
fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the
veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she
stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an
attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how
beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended
arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning
blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white
light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock
of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken
neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the
timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
___________________________________________
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Rudyard Kipling
"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death!"
Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist-(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)
This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi
fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the
big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the
Tailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the muskrat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor,
but always creeps round by the wall, gave him
advice, but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting. He was a
mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his
tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.
His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink.
He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with
any leg, front or back, that he chose to use. He could
fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle brush, and
his war cry as he scuttled through the long grass was:
"Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!" One day, a high summer
flood washed him out of the burrow where he lived
with his father and mother, and carried him, kicking
and clucking, down a roadside ditch. He found a little
wisp of grass floating there, and clung to it till he lost
his senses. When he revived, he was lying in the hot
sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled
indeed, and a small boy was saying, "Here's a dead
mongoose. Let's have a funeral." "No," said his
mother, "let's take him in and dry him. Perhaps he
isn't really dead." They took him into the house, and a
big man picked him up between his finger and thumb
and said he was not dead but half choked. So they
wrapped him in cotton wool, and warmed him over a
little fire, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.
"Now," said the big man (he was an Englishman who
had just moved into the bungalow), "don't frighten
him, and we'll see what he'll do." It is the hardest
thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he
is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto
of all the mongoose family is "Run and find out," and
Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the
cotton wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran
all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order,
scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy's
shoulder. "Don't be frightened, Teddy," said his
father.
"That's his way of making friends." "Ouch! He's
tickling under my chin," said Teddy.
Rikki-tikki looked down between the boy's collar and
neck, snuffed at his ear, and climbed down to the
floor, where he sat rubbing his nose. "Good
gracious," said Teddy's mother, "and that's a wild
creature! I suppose he's so tame because we've been
kind to him." "All mongooses are like that," said her
husband. "If Teddy doesn't pick him up by the tail, or
try to put him in a cage, he'll run in and out of the
house all day long. Let's give him something to eat."
They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki
liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went
out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and
fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he
felt better. "There are more things to find out about in
this house," he said to himself, "than all my family
could find out in all their lives. I shall certainly stay
and find out." He spent all that day roaming over the
house. He nearly drowned himself in the bath-tubs,
put his nose into the ink on a writing table, and
burned it on the end of the big man's cigar, for he
climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing
was done. At nightfall he ran into Teddy's nursery to
watch how kerosene lamps were lighted, and when
Teddy went to bed Rikki-tikki climbed up too. But he
was a restless companion, because he had to get up
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and attend to every noise all through the night, and
find out what made it. Teddy's mother and father
came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and
Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. "I don't like
that," said Teddy's mother. "He may bite the child."
"He'll do no such thing," said the father. "Teddy's
safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound
to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now--"
But Teddy's mother wouldn't think of anything so
awful. Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early
breakfast in the veranda riding on Teddy's shoulder,
and they gave him banana and some boiled egg. He
sat on all their laps one after the other, because every
well-brought-up mongoose always hopes to be a
house mongoose some day and have rooms to run
about in; and Rikki-tikki's mother (she used to live in
the general's house at Segowlee) had carefully told
Rikki what to do if ever he came across white men.
Then Rikki-tikki went out into the garden to see what
was to be seen. It was a large garden, only half
cultivated, with bushes, as big as summer-houses, of
Marshal Niel roses, lime and orange trees, clumps of
bamboos, and thickets of high grass. Rikki-tikki
licked his lips. "This is a splendid hunting-ground,"
he said, and his tail grew bottle-brushy at the thought
of it, and he scuttled up and down the garden,
snuffing here and there till he heard very sorrowful
voices in a thorn-bush. It was Darzee, the Tailorbird,
and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest by
pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up
the edges with fibers, and had filled the hollow with
cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to and fro,
as they sat on the rim and cried. "What is the matter?"
asked Rikki-tikki. "We are very miserable," said
Darzee. "One of our babies fell out of the nest
yesterday and Nag ate him." "H'm!" said Rikki-tikki,
"that is very sad--but I am a stranger here. Who is
Nag?" Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the
nest without answering, for from the thick grass at
the foot of the bush there came a low hiss--a horrid
cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear
feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the
head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra,
and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When
he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground,
he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion
tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki
with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their
expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.
"Who is Nag?" said he. "I am Nag. The great God
Brahm put his mark upon all our people, when the
first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm
as he slept. Look, and be afraid!" He spread out his
hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the
spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly
like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was
afraid for the minute, but it is impossible for a
mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time,
and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra
before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he
knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life
was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too and, at
the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid. "Well,"
said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again,
"marks or no marks, do you think it is right for you to
eat fledglings out of a nest?" Nag was thinking to
himself, and watching the least little movement in the
grass behind Rikki-tikki. He knew that mongooses in
the garden meant death sooner or later for him and
his family, but he wanted to get Rikki-tikki off his
guard. So he dropped his head a little, and put it on
one side. "Let us talk," he said.
"You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?" "Behind
you! Look behind you!" sang Darzee.
Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring.
He jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and
just under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina,
Nag's wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as
he was talking, to make an end of him. He heard her
savage hiss as the stroke missed. He came down
almost across her back, and if he had been an old
mongoose he would have known that then was the
time to break her back with one bite; but he was
afraid of the terrible lashing return stroke of the
cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough,
and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving
Nagaina torn and angry.
"Wicked, wicked Darzee!" said Nag, lashing up as
high as he could reach toward the nest in the thornbush. But Darzee had built it out of reach of snakes,
and it only swayed to and fro. Rikki-tikki felt his eyes
growing red and hot (when a mongoose's eyes grow
red, he is angry), and he sat back on his tail and hind
legs like a little kangaroo, and looked all round him,
and chattered with rage. But Nag and Nagaina had
disappeared into the grass. When a snake misses its
stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of
what it means to do next. Rikki-tikki did not care to
follow them, for he did not feel sure that he could
manage two snakes at once. So he trotted off to the
gravel path near the house, and sat down to think. It
was a serious matter for him. If you read the old
books of natural history, you will find they say that
when the mongoose fights the snake and happens to
get bitten, he runs off and eats some herb that cures
him. That is not true. The victory is only a matter of
quickness of eye and quickness of foot--snake's blow
against mongoose's jump--and as no eye can follow
the motion of a snake's head when it strikes, this
125
makes things much more wonderful than any magic
herb. Rikki-tikki knew he was a young mongoose,
and it made him all the more pleased to think that he
had managed to escape a blow from behind. It gave
him confidence in himself, and when Teddy came
running down the path, Rikki-tikki was ready to be
petted. But just as Teddy was stooping, something
wriggled a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: "Be
careful. I am Death!" It was Karait, the dusty brown
snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and
his bite is as dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so
small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the
more harm to people. Rikki-tikki's eyes grew red
again, and he danced up to Karait with the peculiar
rocking, swaying motion that he had inherited from
his family. It looks very funny, but it is so perfectly
balanced a gait that you can fly off from it at any
angle you please, and in dealing with snakes this is an
advantage.
If Rikki-tikki had only known, he was doing a much
more dangerous thing than fighting Nag, for Karait is
so small, and can turn so quickly, that unless Rikki
bit him close to the back of the head, he would get
the return stroke in his eye or his lip. But Rikki did
not know. His eyes were all red, and he rocked back
and forth, looking for a good place to hold. Karait
struck out. Rikki jumped sideways and tried to run in,
but the wicked little dusty gray head lashed within a
fraction of his shoulder, and he had to jump over the
body, and the head followed his heels close. Teddy
shouted to the house: "Oh, look here! Our mongoose
is killing a snake." And Rikki-tikki heard a scream
from Teddy's mother. His father ran out with a stick,
but by the time he came up, Karait had lunged out
once too far, and Rikki-tikki had sprung, jumped on
the snake's back, dropped his head far between his
forelegs, bitten as high up the back as he could get
hold, and rolled away. That bite paralyzed Karait, and
Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail,
after the custom of his family at dinner, when he
remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose,
and if he wanted all his strength and quickness ready,
he must keep himself thin. He went away for a dust
bath under the castor-oil bushes, while Teddy's father
beat the dead Karait. "What is the use of that?"
thought Rikki-tikki. "I have settled it all;" and then
Teddy's mother picked him up from the dust and
hugged him, crying that he had saved Teddy from
death, and Teddy's father said that he was a
providence, and Teddy looked on with big scared
eyes. Rikki-tikki was rather amused at all the fuss,
which, of course, he did not understand. Teddy's
mother might just as well have petted Teddy for
playing in the dust. Rikki was thoroughly enjoying
himself. That night at dinner, walking to and fro
among the wine-glasses on the table, he might have
stuffed himself three times over with nice things. But
he remembered Nag and Nagaina, and though it was
very pleasant to be patted and petted by Teddy's
mother, and to sit on Teddy's shoulder, his eyes
would get red from time to time, and he would go off
into his long war cry of "Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!"
Teddy carried him off to bed, and insisted on Rikkitikki sleeping under his chin. Rikki-tikki was too well
bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was
asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the
house, and in the dark he ran up against Chuchundra,
the musk-rat, creeping around by the wall.
Chuchundra is a broken-hearted little beast. He
whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up
his mind to run into the middle of the room. But he
never gets there. "Don't kill me," said Chuchundra,
almost weeping. "Rikki-tikki, don't kill me!" "Do you
think a snake-killer kills muskrats?" said Rikki-tikki
scornfully.
"Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes," said
Chuchundra, more sorrowfully than ever. "And how
am I to be sure that Nag won't mistake me for you
some dark night?" "There's not the least danger," said
Rikki-tikki. "But Nag is in the garden, and I know
you don't go there." "My cousin Chua, the rat, told
me--" said Chuchundra, and then he stopped.
"Told you what?" "H'sh! Nag is everywhere, Rikkitikki. You should have talked to Chua in the garden."
"I didn't--so you must tell me. Quick, Chuchundra, or
I'll bite you!"
Chuchundra sat down and cried till the tears rolled
off his whiskers. "I am a very poor man," he sobbed.
"I never had spirit enough to run out into the middle
of the room. H'sh! I mustn't tell you anything. Can't
you hear, Rikki-tikki?" Rikki-tikki listened. The
house was as still as still, but he thought he could just
catch the faintest scratch-scratch in the world--a noise
as faint as that of a wasp walking on a window-pane-the dry scratch of a snake's scales on brick-work.
"That's Nag or Nagaina," he said to himself, "and he
is crawling into the bath-room sluice. You're right,
Chuchundra; I should have talked to Chua." He stole
off to Teddy's bath-room, but there was nothing
there, and then to Teddy's mother's bathroom. At the
bottom of the smooth plaster wall there was a brick
pulled out to make a sluice for the bath water, and as
Rikki-tikki stole in by the masonry curb where the
bath is put, he heard Nag and Nagaina whispering
together outside in the moonlight. "When the house is
emptied of people," said Nagaina to her husband, "he
will have to go away, and then the garden will be our
own again. Go in quietly, and remember that the big
126
man who killed Karait is the first one to bite. Then
come out and tell me, and we will hunt for Rikkitikki together."
"But are you sure that there is anything to be gained
by killing the people?" said Nag.
"Everything. When there were no people in the
bungalow, did we have any mongoose in the garden?
So long as the bungalow is empty, we are king and
queen of the garden; and remember that as soon as
our eggs in the melon bed hatch (as they may
tomorrow), our children will need room and quiet." "I
had not thought of that," said Nag. "I will go, but
there is no need that we should hunt for Rikki-tikki
afterward. I will kill the big man and his wife, and the
child if I can, and come away quietly. Then the
bungalow will be empty, and Rikki-tikki will go."
Rikki-tikki tingled all over with rage and hatred at
this, and then Nag's head came through the sluice,
and his five feet of cold body followed it. Angry as
he was, Rikki-tikki was very frightened as he saw the
size of the big cobra. Nag coiled himself up, raised
his head, and looked into the bathroom in the dark,
and Rikki could see his eyes glitter. "Now, if I kill
him here, Nagaina will know; and if I fight him on
the open floor, the odds are in his favor. What am I to
do?" said Rikki-tikki-tavi. Nag waved to and fro, and
then Rikki-tikki heard him drinking from the biggest
water-jar that was used to fill the bath. "That is
good," said the snake.
"Now, when Karait was killed, the big man had a
stick. He may have that stick still, but when he comes
in to bathe in the morning he will not have a stick. I
shall wait here till he comes. Nagaina--do you hear
me?--I shall wait here in the cool till daytime." There
was no answer from outside, so Rikki-tikki knew
Nagaina had gone away. Nag coiled himself down,
coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the
water jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death. After
an hour he began to move, muscle by muscle, toward
the jar. Nag was asleep, and Rikki-tikki looked at his
big back, wondering which would be the best place
for a good hold. "If I don't break his back at the first
jump," said Rikki, "he can still fight. And if he fights-O Rikki!" He looked at the thickness of the neck
below the hood, but that was too much for him; and a
bite near the tail would only make Nag savage. "It
must be the head"' he said at last; "the head above the
hood. And, when I am once there, I must not let go."
Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of
the water jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth
met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the
red earthenware to hold down the head. This gave
him just one second's purchase, and he made the most
of it. Then he was battered to and fro as a rat is
shaken by a dog--to and fro on the floor, up and
down, and around in great circles, but his eyes were
red and he held on as the body cart-whipped over the
floor, upsetting the tin dipper and the soap dish and
the flesh brush, and banged against the tin side of the
bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and
tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to
death, and, for the honor of his family, he preferred to
be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching,
and felt shaken to pieces when something went off
like a thunderclap just behind him. A hot wind
knocked him senseless and red fire singed his fur.
The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had
fired both barrels of a shotgun into Nag just behind
the hood. Rikki-tikki held on with his eyes shut, for
now he was quite sure he was dead.
But the head did not move, and the big man picked
him up and said, "It's the mongoose again, Alice. The
little chap has saved our lives now." Then Teddy's
mother came in with a very white face, and saw what
was left of Nag, and Rikki-tikki dragged himself to
Teddy's bedroom and spent half the rest of the night
shaking himself tenderly to find out whether he really
was broken into forty pieces, as he fancied. When
morning came he was very stiff, but well pleased
with his doings. "Now I have Nagaina to settle with,
and she will be worse than five Nags, and there's no
knowing when the eggs she spoke of will hatch.
Goodness! I must go and see Darzee," he said.
Without waiting for breakfast, Rikki-tikki ran to the
thornbush where Darzee was singing a song of
triumph at the top of his voice. The news of Nag's
death was all over the garden, for the sweeper had
thrown the body on the rubbish-heap. "Oh, you stupid
tuft of feathers!" said Rikki-tikki angrily. "Is this the
time to sing?" "Nag is dead--is dead--is dead!" sang
Darzee.
"The valiant Rikki-tikki caught him by the head and
held fast. The big man brought the bang-stick, and
Nag fell in two pieces! He will never eat my babies
again." "All that's true enough. But where's
Nagaina?" said Rikki-tikki, looking carefully round
him.
"Nagaina came to the bathroom sluice and called for
Nag," Darzee went on, "and Nag came out on the end
of a stick--the sweeper picked him up on the end of a
stick and threw him upon the rubbish heap. Let us
sing about the great, the red-eyed Rikki-tikki!" And
Darzee filled his throat and sang. "If I could get up to
your nest, I'd roll your babies out!"said Rikki-tikki.
"You don't know when to do the right thing at the
right time. You're safe enough in your nest there, but
127
it's war for me down here. Stop singing a minute,
Darzee." "For the great, the beautiful Rikki-tikki's
sake I will stop," said Darzee.
"What is it, O Killer of the terrible Nag?" "Where is
Nagaina, for the third time?" "On the rubbish heap by
the stables, mourning for Nag. Great is Rikki-tikki
with the white teeth." "Bother my white teeth! Have
you ever heard where she keeps her eggs?" "In the
melon bed, on the end nearest the wall, where the sun
strikes nearly all day. She hid them there weeks ago."
"And you never thought it worthwhile to tell me? The
end nearest the wall, you said?" "Rikki-tikki, you are
not going to eat her eggs?" "Not eat exactly; no.
Darzee, if you have a grain of sense you will fly off
to the stables and pretend that your wing is broken,
and let Nagaina chase you away to this bush. I must
get to the melon-bed, and if I went there now she'd
see me." Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow
who could never hold more than one idea at a time in
his head. And just because he knew that Nagaina's
children were born in eggs like his own, he didn't
think at first that it was fair to kill them. But his wife
was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra's eggs
meant young cobras later on. So she flew off from the
nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and
continue his song about the death of Nag. Darzee was
very like a man in some ways. She fluttered in front
of Nagaina by the rubbish heap and cried out, "Oh,
my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a
stone at me and broke it." Then she fluttered more
desperately than ever. Nagaina lifted up her head and
hissed, "You warned Rikki-tikki when I would have
killed him. Indeed and truly, you've chosen a bad
place to be lame in." And she moved toward Darzee's
wife, slipping along over the dust. "The boy broke it
with a stone!" shrieked Darzee's wife. "Well! It may
be some consolation to you when you're dead to
know that I shall settle accounts with the boy. My
husband lies on the rubbish heap this morning, but
before night the boy in the house will lie very still.
What is the use of running away? I am sure to catch
you. Little fool, look at me!" Darzee's wife knew
better than to do that, for a bird who looks at a
snake's eyes gets so frightened that she cannot move.
Darzee's wife fluttered on, piping sorrowfully, and
never leaving the ground, and Nagaina quickened her
pace. Rikki-tikki heard them going up the path from
the stables, and he raced for the end of the melon
patch near the wall.
There, in the warm litter above the melons, very
cunningly hidden, he found twenty-five eggs, about
the size of a bantam's eggs, but with whitish skin
instead of shell. "I was not a day too soon," he said,
for he could see the baby cobras curled up inside the
skin, and he knew that the minute they were hatched
they could each kill a man or a mongoose. He bit off
the tops of the eggs as fast as he could, taking care to
crush the young cobras, and turned over the litter
from time to time to see whether he had missed any.
At last there were only three eggs left, and Rikkitikki began to chuckle to himself, when he heard
Darzee's wife screaming: "Rikki-tikki, I led Nagaina
toward the house, and she has gone into the veranda,
and--oh, come quickly--she means killing!" Rikkitikki smashed two eggs, and tumbled backward down
the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and
scuttled to the veranda as hard as he could put foot to
the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were
there at early breakfast, but Rikki-tikki saw that they
were not eating anything. They sat stone-still, and
their faces were white. Nagaina was coiled up on the
matting by Teddy's chair, within easy striking
distance of Teddy's bare leg, and she was swaying to
and fro, singing a song of triumph.
"Son of the big man that killed Nag," she hissed,
"stay still. I am not ready yet. Wait a little. Keep very
still, all you three! If you move I strike, and if you do
not move I strike. Oh, foolish people, who killed my
Nag!" Teddy's eyes were fixed on his father, and all
his father could do was to whisper, "Sit still, Teddy.
You mustn't move. Teddy, keep still." Then Rikkitikki came up and cried, "Turn round, Nagaina. Turn
and fight!" "All in good time," said she, without
moving her eyes. "I will settle my account with you
presently. Look at your friends, Rikki-tikki. They are
still and white. They are afraid. They dare not move,
and if you come a step nearer I strike." "Look at your
eggs," said Rikki-tikki, "in the melon bed near the
wall. Go and look, Nagaina!" The big snake turned
half around, and saw the egg on the veranda. "Ah-h!
Give it to me," she said. Rikki-tikki put his paws one
on each side of the egg, and his eyes were blood-red.
"What price for a snake's egg? For a young cobra?
For a young king cobra? For the last--the very last of
the brood? The ants are eating all the others down by
the melon bed." Nagaina spun clear round, forgetting
everything for the sake of the one egg.
Rikki-tikki saw Teddy's father shoot out a big hand,
catch Teddy by the shoulder, and drag him across the
little table with the tea-cups, safe and out of reach of
Nagaina.
"Tricked! Tricked! Tricked! Rikk-tck-tck!" chuckled
Rikki-tikki. "The boy is safe, and it was I--I--I that
caught Nag by the hood last night in the bathroom."
Then he began to jump up and down, all four feet
128
together, his head close to the floor. "He threw me to
and fro, but he could not shake me off. He was dead
before the big man blew him in two. I did it! Rikkitikki-tck-tck! Come then, Nagaina. Come and fight
with me. You shall not be a widow long." Nagaina
saw that she had lost her chance of killing Teddy, and
the egg lay between Rikki-tikki's paws. "Give me the
egg, Rikki-tikki. Give me the last of my eggs, and I
will go away and never come back," she said,
lowering her hood. "Yes, you will go away, and you
will never come back. For you will go to the rubbish
heap with Nag. Fight, widow! The big man has gone
for his gun! Fight!" Rikki-tikki was bounding all
round Nagaina, keeping just out of reach of her
stroke, his little eyes like hot coals.
Nagaina gathered herself together and flung out at
him. Rikki-tikki jumped up and backward. Again and
again and again she struck, and each time her head
came with a whack on the matting of the veranda and
she gathered herself together like a watch spring.
Then Rikki-tikki danced in a circle to get behind her,
and Nagaina spun round to keep her head to his head,
so that the rustle of her tail on the matting sounded
like dry leaves blown along by the wind. He had
forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and
Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last,
while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in
her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and flew like
an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her.
When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a
whip-lash flicked across a horse's neck. Rikki-tikki
knew that he must catch her, or all the trouble would
begin again. She headed straight for the long grass by
the thorn-bush, and as he was running Rikki-tikki
heard Darzee still singing his foolish little song of
triumph. But Darzee's wife was wiser. She flew off
her nest as Nagaina came along, and flapped her
wings about Nagaina's head. If Darzee had helped
they might have turned her, but Nagaina only
lowered her hood and went on. Still, the instant's
delay brought Rikki-tikki up to her, and as she
plunged into the rat-hole where she and Nag used to
live, his little white teeth were clenched on her tail,
and he went down with her--and very few
mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care
to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole;
and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out
and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him. He
held on savagely, and stuck out his feet to act as
brakes on the dark slope of the hot, moist earth. Then
the grass by the mouth of the hole stopped waving,
and Darzee said, "It is all over with Rikki-tikki! We
must sing his death song. Valiant Rikki-tikki is dead!
For Nagaina will surely kill him underground." So he
sang a very mournful song that he made up on the
spur of the minute, and just as he got to the most
touching part, the grass quivered again, and Rikkitikki, covered with dirt, dragged himself out of the
hole leg by leg, licking his whiskers.
Darzee stopped with a little shout. Rikki-tikki shook
some of the dust out of his fur and sneezed. "It is all
over," he said. "The widow will never come out
again." And the red ants that live between the grass
stems heard him, and began to troop down one after
another to see if he had spoken the truth. Rikki-tikki
curled himself up in the grass and slept where he
was--slept and slept till it was late in the afternoon,
for he had done a hard day's work. "Now," he said,
when he awoke, "I will go back to the house. Tell the
Coppersmith, Darzee, and he will tell the garden that
Nagaina is dead." The Coppersmith is a bird who
makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little
hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always
making it is because he is the town crier to every
Indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody
who cares to listen. As Rikki-tikki went up the path,
he heard his "attention" notes like a tiny dinner gong,
and then the steady "Ding-dong-tock! Nag is dead-dong! Nagaina is dead! Ding-dong-tock!" That set all
the birds in the garden singing, and the frogs
croaking, for Nag and Nagaina used to eat frogs as
well as little birds. When Rikki got to the house,
Teddy and Teddy's mother (she looked very white
still, for she had been fainting) and Teddy's father
came out and almost cried over him; and that night he
ate all that was given him till he could eat no more,
and went to bed on Teddy's shoulder, where Teddy's
mother saw him when she came to look late at night.
"He saved our lives and Teddy's life," she said to her
husband. "Just think, he saved all our lives." Rikkitikki woke up with a jump, for the mongooses are
light sleepers. "Oh, it's you," said he. "What are you
bothering for? All the cobras are dead. And if they
weren't, I'm here." Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud
of himself. But he did not grow too proud, and he
kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with
tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra
dared show its head inside the walls.
___________________________________________
Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving
A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker
By Woden, God of Saxons,
From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday,
Truth is a thing that ever I will keep
Unto thylke day in which I creep into
My sepulchre.
CARTWRIGHT
129
The following Tale was found among the papers of
the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of
New York, who was very curious in the Dutch
history of the province, and the manners of the
descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical
researches, however, did not lie so much among
books as among men; for the former are lamentably
scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the
old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that
legendary lore, so invaluable to true history.
Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine
Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed
farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked
upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and
studied it with the zeal of a book-worm.
The result of all these researches was a history of the
province during the reign of the Dutch governors,
which he published some years since. There have
been various opinions as to the literary character of
his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better
than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous
accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its
first appearance, but has since been completely
established; and it is now admitted into all historical
collections, as a book of unquestionable authority.
The old gentleman died shortly after the publication
of his work, and now that he is dead and gone, it
cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his
time might have been better employed in weightier
labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his
own way; and though it did now and then kick up the
dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve
the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest
deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are
remembered "more in sorrow than in anger," and it
begins to be suspected, that he never intended to
injure or offend. But however his memory may be
appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many
folks, whose good opinion is well worth having;
particularly by certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone
so far as to imprint his likeness on their new-year
cakes; and have thus given him a chance for
immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a
Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's Farthing.
***
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must
remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a
dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family,
and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling
up to a noble height, and lording it over the
surrounding country. Every change of season, every
change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day,
produces some change in the magical hues and
shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by
all the good wives, far and near, as perfect
barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they
are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold
outlines on the clear evening sky, but, sometimes,
when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will
gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits,
which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow
and light up like a crown of glory.
At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may
have descried the light smoke curling up from a
village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees,
just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into
the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little
village of great antiquity, having been founded by
some of the Dutch colonists, in the early times of the
province, just about the beginning of the government
of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!)
and there were some of the houses of the original
settlers standing within a few years, built of small
yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed
windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses
(which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn
and weather-beaten), there lived many years since,
while the country was yet a province of Great Britain,
a simple good-natured fellow of the name of Rip Van
Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles
who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of
Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege
of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of
the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed
that he was a simple good-natured man; he was,
moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance
might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained
him such universal popularity; for those men are
most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad,
who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their
tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable
in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a
curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world
for teaching the virtues of patience and longsuffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some
respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so,
Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all
the good wives of the village, who, as usual, with the
amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and
never failed, whenever they talked those matters over
130
in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on
Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too,
would shout with joy whenever he approached. He
assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught
them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them
long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians.
Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was
surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts,
clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks
on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at
him throughout the neighborhood.
The great error in Rip's composition was an
insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It
could not be from the want of assiduity or
perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a
rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all
day without a murmur, even though he should not be
encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a
fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together,
trudging through woods and swamps, and uphill and
down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons.
He would never refuse to assist a neighbor even in
the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all
country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building
stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to
employ him to run their errands, and to do such little
odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do
for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to
anybody's business but his own; but as to doing
family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found
it impossible.
In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his
farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground
in the whole country; everything about it went wrong,
and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were
continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go
astray, or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure
to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the
rain always made a point of setting in just as he had
some out-door work to do; so that though his
patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his
management, acre by acre, until there was little more
left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet
it was the worst conditioned farm in the
neighborhood.
His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they
belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten
in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits,
with the old clothes of his father. He was generally
seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels,
equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins,
which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as
a fine lady does her train in bad weather.
Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy
mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take
the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever
can be got with least thought or trouble, and would
rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left
to himself, he would have whistled life away in
perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually
dinning in his ears about his idleness, his
carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his
family. Morning, noon, and night, her tongue was
incessantly going, and everything he said or did was
sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip
had but one way of replying to all lectures of the
kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a
habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast
up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always
provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was
fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of
the house - the only side which, in truth, belongs to a
hen-pecked husband.
Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who
was as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame
Van Winkle regarded them as companions in
idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil
eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray.
True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable
dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured
the woods - but what courage can withstand the everduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue?
The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his
tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs,
he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a
sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least
flourish of a broom-stick or ladle, he would fly to the
door with yelping precipitation.
Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle
as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never
mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only
edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a
long while he used to console himself, when driven
from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club
of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages
of the village; which held its sessions on a bench
before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait
of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to
sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day,
talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling
endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would
have been worth any statesman's money to have
heard the profound discussions that sometimes took
place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into
their hands from some passing traveller. How
solemnly they would listen to the contents, as
drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the
131
schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man, who was
not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the
dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate
upon public events some months after they had taken
place.
The opinions of this junto were completely controlled
by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and
landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his
seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently
to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree;
so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his
movements as accurately as by a sundial. It is true he
was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe
incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great
man has his adherents), perfectly understood him,
and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything
that was read or related displeased him, he was
observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send
forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when
pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and
tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and
sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and
letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would
gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation.
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at
length routed by his termagant wife, who would
suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the
assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor
was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself,
sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago,
who charged him outright with encouraging her
husband in habits of idleness.
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and
his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the
farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand
and stroll away into the woods. Here he would
sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share
the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he
sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in persecution.
"Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress leads thee a
dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live
thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!" Wolf
would wag his tail, look wistfuly in his master's face,
and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he
reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.
In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day,
Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the
highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains. He was after
his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still
solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports
of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself,
late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with
mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a
precipice. From an opening between the trees he
could overlook all the lower country for many a mile
of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly
Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but
majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud,
or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping
on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the
blue highlands.
On the other side he looked down into a deep
mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom
filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and
scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting
sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene;
evening was gradually advancing; the mountains
began to throw their long blue shadows over the
valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he
could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh
when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame
Van Winkle.
As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a
distance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van
Winkle!" He looked round, but could see nothing but
a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain.
He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and
turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry
ring through the still evening air: "Rip Van Winkle!
Rip Van Winkle!" - at the same time Wolf bristled up
his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his
master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen.
Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him;
he looked anxiously in the same direction, and
perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks,
and bending under the weight of something he
carried on his back. He was surprised to see any
human being in this lonely and unfrequented place,
but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood
in need of his assistance, he hastened down to yield
it.
On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the
singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a
short square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair,
and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique
Dutch fashion - a cloth jerkin strapped round the
waist - several pair of breeches, the outer one of
ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down
the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his
shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and
made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with
the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this
new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual
alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they
clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed
132
of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every
now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant
thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or
rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their
rugged path conducted. He paused for an instant, but
supposing it to be the muttering of one of those
transient thunder-showers which often take place in
mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the
ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small
amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular
precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees
shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses
of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During
the whole time Rip and his companion had labored
on in silence; for though the former marveled greatly
what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor
up this wild mountain, yet there was something
strange and incomprehensible about the unknown,
that inspired awe and checked familiarity.
On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder
presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre
was a company of odd-looking personages playing at
nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish
fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins,
with long knives in their belts, and most of them had
enormous breeches, of similar style with that of the
guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar: one had a
large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes: the
face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose,
and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off
with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of
various shapes and colors. There was one who
seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old
gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he
wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, highcrowned hat and feather, red stockings, and highheeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group
reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish
painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the
village parson, and which had been brought over
from Holland at the time of the settlement.
What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though
these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet
they maintained the gravest faces, the most
mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most
melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed.
Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the
noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled,
echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of
thunder.
As Rip and his companion approached them, they
suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him
with such fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange,
uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart
turned within him, and his knees smote together. His
companion now emptied the contents of the keg into
large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the
company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they
quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then
returned to their game.
By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He
even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to
taste the beverage, which he found had much of the
flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a
thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the
draught. One taste provoked another; and he
reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at
length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam
in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell
into a deep sleep.
On waking, he found himself on the green knoll
whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He
rubbed his eyes - it was a bright sunny morning. The
birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes,
and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the
pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have
not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences
before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of
liquor - the mountain ravine - the wild retreat among
the rocks - the woe-begone party at ninepins - the
flagon - "Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!"
thought Rip - "what excuse shall I make to Dame
Van Winkle!"
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean
well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock
lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock
falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now
suspected that the grave roysterers of the mountain
had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with
liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had
disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a
squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and
shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated
his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.
He determined to revisit the scene of the last
evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party,
to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he
found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his
usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree
with me," thought Rip; "and if this frolic should lay
me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a
blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some
difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the
gully up which he and his companion had ascended
the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a
mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping
from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling
murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its
133
sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of
birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes
tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that
twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and
spread a kind of network in his path.
At length he reached to where the ravine had opened
through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of
such opening remained. The rocks presented a high
impenetrable wall over which the torrent came
tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a
broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the
surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought
to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog;
he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle
crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that
overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their
elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor
man's perplexities. What was to be done? the
morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for
want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog
and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would
not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his
head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart
full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps
homeward.
As he approached the village he met a number of
people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat
surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted
with everyone in the country round. Their dress, too,
was of a different fashion from that to which he was
accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks
of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon
him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant
recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily,
to do the same, when to his astonishment, he found
his beard had grown a foot long!
He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop
of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him,
and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one
of which he recognized for an old acquaintance,
barked at him as he passed. The very village was
altered; it was larger and more populous. There were
rows of houses which he had never seen before, and
those which had been his familiar haunts had
disappeared. Strange names were over the doors strange faces at the windows - everything was
strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to
doubt whether both he and the world around him
were not bewitched. Surely this was his native
village, which he had left but the day before. There
stood the Kaatskill mountains - there ran the silver
Hudson at a distance - there was every hill and dale
precisely as it had always been - Rip was sorely
perplexed - "That flagon last night," thought he, "has
addled my poor head sadly!"
It was with some difficulty that he found the way to
his own house, which he approached with silent awe,
expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of
Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to
decay - the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and
the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that
looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called
him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth,
and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed - "My
very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!"
He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame
Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was
empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This
desolateness overcame all his connubial fears - he
called loudly for his wife and children - the lonely
chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then
all again was silence.
He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort,
the village inn - but it too was gone. A large rickety
wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping
windows, some of them broken and mended with old
hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted,
"the Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of
the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch
inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole,
with something on the top that looked like a red
night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which
was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes - all
this was strange and incomprehensible. He
recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of
King George, under which he had smoked so many a
peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly
metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of
blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead
of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked
hat, and underneath was painted in large characters,
GENERAL WASHINGTON.
There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door,
but none that Rip recollected. The very character of
the people seemed changed. There was a busy,
bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the
accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He
looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his
broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering
clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or
Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the
contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a
lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of
handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of
citizens - elections - members of congress - liberty Bunker's Hill - heroes of seventy-six - and other
134
words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the
bewildered Van Winkle.
The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard,
his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an
army of women and children at his heels, soon
attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They
crowded round him, eyeing him from head to foot
with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him,
and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which
side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity.
Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the
arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear,
"Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was
equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a
knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp
cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting
them to the right and left with his elbows as he
passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with
one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his
keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into
his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "what
brought him to the election with a gun on his
shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he
meant to breed a riot in the village?" - "Alas!
gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a
poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal
subject of the king, God bless him!"
Here a general shout burst from the by-standers - "A
tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with
him!" It was with great difficulty that the selfimportant man in the cocked hat restored order; and,
having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow,
demanded again of the unknown culprit, what he
came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor
man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but
merely came there in search of some of his
neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern.
"Well - who are they? - name them."
Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired,
"Where's Nicholas Vedder?"
There was a silence for a little while, when an old
man replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas
Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen
years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten
and gone too."
"Where's Brom Dutcher?"
"Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the
war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony
Point - others say he was drowned in a squall at the
foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know - he never came
back again."
"Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?"
"He went off to the wars too, was a great militia
general, and is now in congress."
Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes
in his home and friends, and finding himself thus
alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by
treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of
matters which he could not understand: war congress - Stony Point; - he had no courage to ask
after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does
nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?"
"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh,
to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning
against the tree."
Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of
himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as
lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was
now completely confounded. He doubted his own
identity, and whether he was himself or another man.
In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the
cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his
name?
"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not
myself - I'm somebody else - that's me yonder - no that's somebody else got into my shoes - I was myself
last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and
they've changed my gun, and every thing's changed,
and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or
who I am!"
The by-standers began now to look at each other,
nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against
their foreheads. There was a whisper also, about
securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from
doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the
self-important man in the cocked hat retired with
some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh
comely woman pressed through the throng to get a
peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby
child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks,
began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little
fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the
child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all
awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What
is your name, my good woman?" asked he.
"Judith Gardenier."
135
"And your father's name?"
"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but
it's twenty years since he went away from home with
his gun, and never has been heard of since - his dog
came home without him; but whether he shot himself,
or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I
was then but a little girl."
Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it
with a faltering voice:
"Where's your mother?"
"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she
broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a NewEngland peddler."
There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this
intelligence. The honest man could contain himself
no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his
arms. "I am your father!" cried he - "Young Rip Van
Winkle once - old Rip Van Winkle now! - Does
nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"
All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out
from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and
peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed,
"Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle - it is himself!
Welcome home again, old neighbor - Why, where
have you been these twenty long years?"
Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years
had been to him but as one night. The neighbors
stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at
each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks: and
the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when
the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed
down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head upon which there was a general shaking of the head
throughout the assemblage.
It was determined, however, to take the opinion of
old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly
advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the
historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest
accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient
inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the
wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood.
He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story
in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the
company that it was a fact, handed down from his
ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains
had always been haunted by strange beings. That it
was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the
first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind
of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the
Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the
scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye
upon the river, and the great city called by his name.
That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch
dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the
mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer
afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals
of thunder.
To make a long story short, the company broke up,
and returned to the more important concerns of the
election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with
her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout
cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected
for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his
back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of
himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was
employed to work on the farm; but evinced an
hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but
his business.
Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon
found many of his former cronies, though all rather
the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred
making friends among the rising generation, with
whom he soon grew into great favor.
Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at
that happy age when a man can be idle with
impunity, he took his place once more on the bench
at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the
patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old
times "before the war." It was some time before he
could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be
made to comprehend the strange events that had
taken place during his torpor. How that there had
been a revolutionary war - that the country had
thrown off the yoke of old England - and that, instead
of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third,
he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in
fact, was no politician; the changes of states and
empires made but little impression on him; but there
was one species of despotism under which he had
long groaned, and that was - petticoat government.
Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of
the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out
whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of
Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was
mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his
shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass
either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or
joy at his deliverance.
He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived
at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to
136
vary on some points every time he told it, which was,
doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It
at last settled down precisely to the tale I have
related, and not a man, woman, or child in the
neighborhood, but knew it by heart. Some always
pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that
Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one
point on which he always remained flighty. The old
Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave
it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a
thunderstorm of a summer afternoon about the
Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew
are at their game of nine-pins; and it is a common
wish of all hen-pecked husbands in the
neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands,
that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip
Van Winkle's flagon.
NOTE - The foregoing Tale, one would suspect, had
been suggested to Mr. Knickerbocker by a little
German superstition about the Emperor Frederick der
Rothbart, and the Kypphauser mountain: the
subjoined note, however, which he had appended to
the tale, shows that it is an absolute fact, narrated
with his usual fidelity:
"The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible
to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I
know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to
have been very subject to marvellous events and
appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger
stories than this, in the villages along the Hudson; all
of which were too well authenticated to admit of a
doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle
myself who, when last I saw him, was a very
venerable old man, and so perfectly rational and
consistent on every other point, that I think no
conscientious person could refuse to take this into the
bargain; nay, I have seen a certificate on the subject
taken before a country justice and signed with a
cross, in the justice's own handwriting. The story,
therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt. D. K."
___________________________________________
Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell
IN MOULMEIN, IN LOWER BURMA, I was hated
by large numbers of people--the only time in my life
that I have been important enough for this to happen
to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town,
and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European
feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a
riot, but if a European woman went through the
bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel
juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an
obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed
safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up
on the football field and the referee (another Burman)
looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous
laughter. This happened more than once. In the end
the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me
everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at
a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young
Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were
several thousands of them in the town and none of
them seemed to have anything to do except stand on
street corners and jeer at Europeans.
All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time
I had already made up my mind that imperialism was
an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and
got out of it the better. Theoretically--and secretly, of
course--I was all for the Burmese and all against their
oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I
hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.
In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at
close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in
the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed
faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks
of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos--all
these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt.
But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young
and ill-educated and I had had to think out my
problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every
Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the
British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is
a great deal better than the younger empires that are
going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck
between my hatred of the empire I served and my
rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to
make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I
thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny,
as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum,
upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I
thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to
drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings
like these are the normal by-products of imperialism;
ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him
off duty.
One day something happened which in a roundabout
way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself,
but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before
of the real nature of imperialism--the real motives for
which despotic governments act. Early one morning
the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of
the town rang me up on the phone and said that an
elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please
come and do something about it? I did not know what
I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening
and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle,
an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an
elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in
137
terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way
and told me about the elephant's doings. It was not, of
course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had
gone "must." It had been chained up, as tame
elephants always are when their attack of "must" is
due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain
and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could
manage it when it was in that state, had set out in
pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was
now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning
the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town.
The Burmese population had no weapons and were
quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed
somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided
some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had
met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver
jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van
over and inflicted violences upon it.
The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian
constables were waiting for me in the quarter where
the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor
quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched
with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I
remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the
beginning of the rains. We began questioning the
people as to where the elephant had gone and, as
usual, failed to get any definite information. That is
invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds
clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to
the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of
the people said that the elephant had gone in one
direction, some said that he had gone in another,
some professed not even to have heard of any
elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the
whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a
little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized
cry of "Go away, child! Go away this instant!" and an
old woman with a switch in her hand came round the
corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of
naked children. Some more women followed,
clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there
was something that the children ought not to have
seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body
sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black
Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not
have been dead many minutes. The people said that
the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the
corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its
foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This
was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his
face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of
yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms
crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His
face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the
teeth bared and grinning with an expression of
unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that
the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have
seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast's
foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as
one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I
sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow
an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony,
not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if
it smelt the elephant.
The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle
and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans
had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the
paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away.
As I started forward practically the whole population
of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed
me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting
excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They
had not shown much interest in the elephant when he
was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different
now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun
to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides
they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I
had no intention of shooting the elephant--I had
merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if
necessary--and it is always unnerving to have a
crowd following you. I marched down the hill,
looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my
shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling
at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from
the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a
miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across,
not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and
dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing
eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He
took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach.
He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them
against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into
his mouth.
I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the
elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not
to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working
elephant--it is comparable to destroying a huge and
costly piece of machinery--and obviously one ought
not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that
distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no
more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I
think now that his attack of "must" was already
passing off; in which case he would merely wander
harmlessly about until the mahout came back and
caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to
shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a
little while to make sure that he did not turn savage
again, and then go home.
138
But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that
had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two
thousand at the least and growing every minute. It
blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I
looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish
clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of
fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot.
They were watching me as they would watch a
conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like
me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was
momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I
realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after
all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do
it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me
forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I
stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first
grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's
dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with
his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native
crowd--seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but
in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and
fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I
perceived in this moment that when the white man
turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He
becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the
conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the
condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in
trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis
he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He
wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to
shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing
it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like
a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his
own mind and do definite things. To come all that
way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people
marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away,
having done nothing--no, that was impossible. The
crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every
white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not
to be laughed at.
took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he
might charge if you went too close to him.
But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched
him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with
that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants
have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to
shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about
killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and
never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to
kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's
owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was
worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only
be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly.
But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some
experienced-looking Burmans who had been there
when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant
had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or
feel the kick--one never does when a shot goes home-but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up
from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time,
one would have thought, even for the bullet to get
there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over
the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line
of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken,
shrunken, immensely old, as though the frighfful
impact of the bullet had paralysed him without
knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a
long time--it might have been five seconds, I dare
say--he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth
slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have
settled upon him. One could have imagined him
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I
ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of
the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I
could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be
safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But
also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I
was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft
mud into which one would sink at every step. If the
elephant charged and I missed him, I should have
about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller.
But even then I was not thinking particularly of my
own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind.
For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I
was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have
been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be
frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he
isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was
that if anything went wrong those two thousand
Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on
and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up
the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable
that some of them would laugh. That would never do.
There was only one alternative. I shoved the
cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the
road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still,
and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the
theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from
innumerable throats. They were going to have their
bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German
thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that
in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an
imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I
ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to
have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed
several inches in front of this, thinking the brain
would be further forward.
139
thousands of years old. I fired again into the same
spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but
climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood
weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping.
I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for
him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole
body and knock the last remnant of strength from his
legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise,
for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed
to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk
reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the
first and only time. And then down he came, his belly
towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the
ground even where I lay.
I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me
across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant
would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was
breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps,
his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling.
His mouth was wide open--I could see far down into
caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for
him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I
fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I
thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out
of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His
body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the
tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was
dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some
world remote from me where not even a bullet could
damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end
to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the
great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet
powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish
him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot
after shot into his heart and down his throat. They
seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps
continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.
In the end I could not stand it any longer and went
away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to
die. Burmans were bringing dahs and baskets even
before I left, and I was told they had stripped his
body almost to the bones by the afternoon.
Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions
about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was
furious, but he was only an Indian and could do
nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing,
for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if
its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans
opinion was divided. The older men said I was right,
the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot
an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant
was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie.
And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had
been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave
me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I
often wondered whether any of the others grasped
that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
___________________________________________
The Lottery
Shirley Jackson
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with
the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers
were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly
green. The people of the village began to gather in
the square, between the post office and the bank,
around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so
many people that the lottery took two days and had to
be started on June 26th. but in this village, where
there were only about three hundred people, the
whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could
begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be
through in time to allow the villagers to get home for
noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was
recently over for the summer, and the feeling of
liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to
gather together quietly for a while before they broke
into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the
classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands.
Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of
stones, and the other boys soon followed his
example, selecting the smoothest and roundest
stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix- the villagers pronounced this name "Dellacroy"-eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner
of the square and guarded it against the raids of the
other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among
themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys,
and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung
to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.
Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own
children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and
taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of
stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and
they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing
faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after
their menfolk. They greeted one another and
exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their
husbands. Soon the women, standing by their
husbands, began to call to their children, and the
children came reluctantly, having to be called four or
five times. Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's
grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of
140
stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came
quickly and took his place between his father and his
oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted--as were the square
dances, the teen club, the Halloween program--by
Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to
civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and
he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for
him because he had no children and his wife was a
scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the
black wooden box, there was a murmur of
conversation among the villagers, and he waved and
called, "Little late today, folks." The postmaster, Mr.
Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool,
and the stool was put in the center of the square and
Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The
villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between
themselves and the stool, and when Mr. Summers
said, "Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?"
there was a hesitation before two men, Mr. Martin
and his oldest son, Baxter, came forward to hold the
box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up
the papers inside it.
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been
lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the
stool had been put into use even before Old Man
Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr.
Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about
making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as
much tradition as was represented by the black box.
There was a story that the present box had been made
with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the
one that had been constructed when the first people
settled down to make a village here. Every year, after
the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a
new box, but every year the subject was allowed to
fade off without anything's being done. The black
box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no
longer completely black but splintered badly along
one side to show the original wood color, and in
some places faded or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black
box securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had
stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because
so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded,
Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of
paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been
used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Summers
had argued, had been all very well when the village
was tiny, but now that the population was more than
three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was
necessary to use something that would fit more easily
into the black box. The night before the lottery, Mr.
Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper
and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the
safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked up
until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square
next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put
way, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had
spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year
underfoot in the post office. and sometimes it was set
on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.
There was a great deal of fussing to be done before
Mr. Summers declared the lottery open. There were
the lists to make up--of heads of families, heads of
households in each family, members of each
household in each family. There was the proper
swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as
the official of the lottery; at one time, some people
remembered, there had been a recital of some sort,
performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory,
tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each
year; some people believed that the official of the
lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it,
others believed that he was supposed to walk among
the people, but years and years ago this part of the
ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been,
also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery
had had to use in addressing each person who came
up to draw from the box, but this also had changed
with time, until now it was felt necessary only for the
official to speak to each person approaching. Mr.
Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white
shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly
on the black box, he seemed very proper and
important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves
and the Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and
turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson
came hurriedly along the path to the square, her
sweater thrown over her shoulders, and slid into place
in the back of the crowd. "Clean forgot what day it
was," she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to
her, and they both laughed softly. "Thought my old
man was out back stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson
went on, "and then I looked out the window and the
kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the
twenty-seventh and came a-running." She dried her
hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're
in time, though. They're still talking away up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the
crowd and found her husband and children standing
near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm
as a farewell and began to make her way through the
141
crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let
her through; two or three people said, in voices just
loud enough to be heard across the crowd, "Here
comes your Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she made
it after all." Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband,
and Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said
cheerfully, "Thought we were going to have to get on
without you, Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning,
"Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now,
would you. Joe?" and soft laughter ran through the
crowd as the people stirred back into position after
Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
"Well, now," Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we
better get started, get this over with, so's we can go
back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
"Dunbar," several people said. "Dunbar, Dunbar."
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar," he
said. "That's right. He's broke his leg, hasn't he?
Who's drawing for him?"
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers
cleared his throat and looked at the list. "All ready?"
he called. "Now, I'll read the names--heads of
families first--and the men come up and take a paper
out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand
without looking at it until everyone has had a turn.
Everything clear?"
The people had done it so many times that they only
half listened to the directions; most of them were
quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around. Then
Mr. Summers raised one hand high and said,
"Adams." A man disengaged himself from the crowd
and came forward. "Hi, Steve," Mr. Summers said,
and Mr. Adams said, "Hi, Joe." They grinned at one
another humorlessly and nervously. Then Mr. Adams
reached into the black box and took out a folded
paper. He held it firmly by one corner as he turned
and went hastily back to his place in the crowd,
where he stood a little apart from his family, not
looking down at his hand.
"Allen," Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
"Me, I guess," a woman said, and Mr. Summers
turned to look at her. "Wife draws for her husband,"
Mr. Summers said. "Don't you have a grown boy to
do it for you, Janey?" Although Mr. Summers and
everyone else in the village knew the answer
perfectly well, it was the business of the official of
the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr.
Summers waited with an expression of polite interest
while Mrs. Dunbar answered.
"Horace's not but sixteen yet," Mrs. Dunbar said
regretfully. "Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this
year."
"Right," Mr. Summers said. He made a note on the
list he was holding. Then he asked, "Watson boy
drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he
said. "I m drawing for m'mother and me." He blinked
his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several
voices in the crowd said things like "Good fellow,
Jack," and "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do
it."
"Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone.
Old Man Warner make it?"
"Here," a voice said, and Mr. Summers nodded.
"Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries
anymore," Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the
back row. "Seems like we got through with the last
one only last week."
"Time sure goes fast," Mrs. Graves said.
"Clark.... Delacroix."
"There goes my old man," Mrs. Delacroix said. She
held her breath while her husband went forward.
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went
steadily to the box while one of the women said, "Go
on, Janey," and another said, "There she goes."
"We're next," Mrs. Graves said. She watched while
Mr. Graves came around from the side of the box,
greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of
paper from the box. By now, all through the crowd
there were men holding the small folded papers in
their large hands, turning them over and over
nervously Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood
together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip of paper.
"Harburt.... Hutchinson."
"Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said, and the
people near her laughed.
142
"Jones."
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner,
who stood next to him, "that over in the north village
they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted, "Pack of crazy fools," he
said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good
enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be
wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work
anymore, live that way for a while. Used to be a
saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.'
First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed
chickweed and acorns. There's always been a
lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see
young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody."
"Some places have already quit lotteries," Mrs.
Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said
stoutly. "Pack of young fools."
"Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go
forward. "Overdyke.... Percy."
"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older
son. "I wish they'd hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
Dunbars?," "Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices
began to say, "It's Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill
Hutchinson's got it."
"Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older
son.
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons.
Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at
the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson
shouted to Mr. Summers, "You didn't give him time
enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It
wasn't fair!"
"Be a good sport, Tessie, " Mrs. Delacroix called, and
Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance."
"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done
pretty fast, and now we've got to be hurrying a little
more to get done in time." He consulted his next list.
"Bill," he said, "you draw for the Hutchinson family.
You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled.
"Make them take their chance!"
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families,
Tessie," Mr. Summers said gently. "You know that as
well as anyone else."
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped
forward precisely and selected a slip from the box.
Then he called, "Warner."
"Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man
Warner said as he went through the crowd. "Seventyseventh time."
"Watson." The tall boy came awkwardly through the
crowd. Someone said, "Don't be nervous, Jack," and
Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son."
"I guess not, Joe," Bill Hutchinson said regretfully.
"My daughter draws with her husband's family, that's
only fair. And I've got no other family except the
kids."
"Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's
you," Mr. Summers said in explanation, "and as far as
drawing for households is concerned, that's you, too.
Right?"
"Right," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Zanini."
After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause,
until Mr. Summers, holding his slip of paper in the
air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one
moved, and then all the slips of paper were opened.
Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once,
saying, "Who is it?" "Who's got it?" "Is it the
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked
formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said. "There's Bill, Jr., and
Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me."
143
"All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got
their tickets back?"
"It's not the way it used to be," Old Man Warner said
clearly. "People ain't the way they used to be."
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper.
"Put them in the box, then," Mr. Summers directed.
"Take Bill's and put it in."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers.
Harry, you open little Dave's."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson
said, as quietly as she could. "I tell you it wasn't fair.
You didn't give him time enough to choose.
Everybody saw that."
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a
general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and
everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill.
Jr., opened theirs at the same time, and both beamed
and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding
their slips of paper above their heads.
Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in
the box, and he dropped all the papers but those onto
the ground, where the breeze caught them and lifted
them off.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and
then Mr. Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and
Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.
"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to
the people around her.
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was
hushed. "Show us her paper. Bill."
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked, and Bill
Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his wife
and children, nodded.
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the
slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it,
the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night
before with the heavy pencil in the coal company
office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir
in the crowd.
"Remember," Mr. Summers said, "take the slips and
keep them folded until each person has taken one.
Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the
hand of the little boy, who came willingly with him
up to the box. "Take a paper out of the box, Davy,"
Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand into the box
and laughed. "Take just one paper," Mr. Summers
said. "Harry, you hold it for him." Mr. Graves took
the child's hand and removed the folded paper from
the tight fist and held it while little Dave stood next
to him and looked up at him wonderingly.
"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve,
and her school friends breathed heavily as she went
forward, switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily
from the box "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy,
his face red and his feet overlarge, nearly knocked
the box over as he got a paper out. "Tessie," Mr.
Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking
around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to
the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind
her.
"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson
reached into the box and felt around, bringing his
hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.
"All right, folks," Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish
quickly."
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and
lost the original black box, they still remembered to
use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made
earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground
with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of
the box. Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she
had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs.
Dunbar. "Come on," she said. "Hurry up."
Mrs. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she
said. gasping for breath, "I can't run at all. You'll
have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already, and someone gave
little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared
space by now, and she held her hands out desperately
as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she
said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's
not Nancy," and the sound of the whisper reached the
edges of the crowd.
144
Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on,
everyone." Steve Adams was in the front of the
crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed
and then they were upon her.
___________________________________________
“The Valley of Childish Things”
Edith Wharton
Once upon a time a number of children lived together
in the Valley of Childish Things, playing all manner
of delightful games, and studying the same lessonbooks. But one day a little girl, one of their number,
decided that it was time to see something of the
world about which the lesson-books had taught her;
and as none of the other children cared to leave their
games, she set out alone to climb the pass which led
out of the valley.
It was a hard climb, but at length she reached a
cold, bleak table-land beyond the mountains. Here
she saw cities and men, and learned many useful arts,
and in so doing grew to be a woman. But the tableland was bleak and cold, and when she had served
her apprenticeship she decided to return to her old
companions in the Valley of Childish Things, and
work with them instead of with strangers.
It was a weary way back, and her feet were bruised
by the stones, and her face was beaten by the
weather; but half way down the pass she met a man,
who kindly helped her over the roughest places. Like
herself, he was lame and weather-beaten; but as soon
as he spoke she recognized him as one of her old
playmates. He too had been out in the world, and was
going back to the valley; and on the way they talked
together of the work they meant to do there. He had
been a dull boy, and she had never taken much notice
of him; but as she listened to his plans for building
bridges and draining swamps and cutting roads
through the jungle, she thought to herself, "Since he
has grown into such a fine fellow, what splendid men
and women my other playmates must have become!"
studies, he was playing marbles with all the youngest
boys in the valley.
At first, the children seemed glad to have her back,
but soon she saw that her presence interfered with
their games; and when she tried to tell them of the
great things that were being done on the table-land
beyond the mountains, they picked up their toys and
went farther down the valley to play.
Then she turned to her fellow-traveler, who was the
only grown man in the valley; but he was on his
knees before a dear little girl with blue eyes and a
coral necklace, for whom he was making a garden
out of cockle-shells and bits of glass, and broken
flowers stuck in sand.
The little girl was clapping her hands and crowing
(she was too young to speak articulately); and when
she who had grown to be a woman laid her hand on
the man's shoulder, and asked him if he did not want
to set to work with her building bridges, draining
swamps, and cutting roads through the jungle, he
replied that at that particular moment he was too
busy.
And as she turned away, he added in the kindest
possible way, "Really, my dear, you ought to have
taken better care of your complexion."
___________________________________________
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
It is very seldom that mere ordinary
people like John and myself secure ancestral
halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I
would say a haunted house, and reach the height
of romantic felicity -- but that would be asking
But what was her surprise to find, on reaching the
valley, that her former companions, instead of
growing into men and women, had all remained little
children. Most of them were playing the same old
games, and the few who affected to be working were
engaged in such strenuous occupations as building
mud-pies and sailing paper boats in basins. As for the
lad who had been the favorite companion of her
too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is
something queer about it.
145
Else, why should it be let so cheaply?
and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to
And why have stood so long untenanted?
"work" until I am well
John laughs at me, of course, but one
again.
expects that in marriage.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
John is practical in the extreme. He has
Personally, I believe that congenial work,
no patience with faith, an intense horror of
with excitement and change, would do me good.
superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of
But what is one to do?
things not to be felt and seen and put down in
I did write for a while in spite of them;
figures.
but it does exhaust me a good deal -- having to
John is a physician, and perhaps -- (I
be too sly about it, or else meet with heavy
would not say it to a living soul, of course, but
opposition.
this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)
I sometimes fancy that in my condition if
-- perhaps that is one reason I do not get well
I had less opposition and more society and
faster.
stimulus -- but John says the very worst thing I
You see he does not believe I am sick!
can do is to think about my condition, and I
And what can one do?
confess it always makes me feel bad.
If a physician of high standing, and one's
So I will let it alone and talk about the
own husband, assures friends and relatives that
house.
there is really nothing the matter with one but
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone
temporary nervous depression -- a slight
standing well back from the road, quite three
hysterical tendency -- what is one to do?
miles from the village. It makes me think of
My brother is also a physician, and also
English places that you read about, for there are
of high standing, and he says the same thing.
hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of
So I take phosphates or phosphites --
separate little houses for the gardeners and
whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air,
people.
146
There is a delicious garden! I never saw
roses all over the window, and such pretty
such a garden -- large and shady, full of
old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would
box-bordered paths, and lined with long
not hear of it.
grape-covered arbors with seats under them.
He said there was only one window and
There were greenhouses, too, but they are
not room for two beds, and no near room for him
all broken now.
if he took another.
There was some legal trouble, I believe,
He is very careful and loving, and hardly
something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow,
lets me stir without special direction.
the place has been empty for years.
I have a schedule prescription for each
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid,
hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so
but I don't care -- there is something strange
I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.
about the house -- I can feel it.
He said we came here solely on my
I even said so to John one moonlight
account, that I was to have perfect rest and all
evening but he said what I felt was a draught,
the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on
and shut the window.
your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food
I get unreasonably angry with John
somewhat on your appetite; but air you can
sometimes I'm sure I never used to be so
absorb all the time. 'So we took the nursery at
sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous
the top of the house.
condition.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect
nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air
proper self-control; so I take pains to control
and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and
myself -- before him, at least, and that makes me
then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge;
very tired.
for the windows are barred for little children,
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one
and there are rings and things in the walls.
downstairs that opened on the piazza and had
The paint and paper look as if a boys'
147
school had used it. It is stripped off -- the paper
haven't felt like writing before, since that first
in great patches all around the head of my bed,
day.
about as far as I can reach, and in a great place
I am sitting by the window now, up in
on the other side of the room low down. I never
this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to
saw a worse paper in my life.
hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack
One of those sprawling flamboyant
of strength.
patterns committing every artistic sin.
John is away all day, and even some
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in
nights when his cases are serious.
following, pronounced enough to constantly
I am glad my case is not serious!
irritate and provoke study, and when you follow
But these nervous troubles are dreadfully
the lame uncertain curves for a little distance
depressing.
they suddenly commit suicide -- plunge off at
John does not know how much I really
outrageous angles, destroy themselves in
suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer,
unheard of contradictions.
and that satisfies him.
The color is repellent, almost revolting; a
Of course it is only nervousness. It does
smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by
weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way!
the slow-turning sunlight.
I meant to be such a help to John, such a
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some
real rest and comfort, and here I am a
places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
comparative burden already!
No wonder the children hated it! I should
Nobody would believe what an effort it is
hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.
to do what little I am able, -- to dress and
There comes John, and I must put this
entertain, and order things.
away, -- he hates to have me write a word.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with the
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baby. Such a dear baby!
We have been here two weeks, and I
And yet I cannot be with him, it makes
148
me so nervous.
silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a
I suppose John never was nervous in his
whim.
life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper!
I'm really getting quite fond of the big
At first he meant to repaper the room, but
room, all but that horrid paper.
afterwards he said that I was letting it get the
Out of one window I can see the garden,
better of me, and that nothing was worse for a
those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous
nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly
He said that after the wall-paper was
trees.
changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and
Out of another I get a lovely view of the
then the barred windows, and then that gate at
bay and a little private wharf belonging to the
the head of the stairs, and so on.
estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs
"You know the place is doing you good,"
down there from the house. I always fancy I see
he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate
people walking in these numerous paths and
the house just for a three months'
arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give
rental."
way to fancy in the least. He says that with my
"Then do let us go downstairs," I said,
imaginative power and habit of story-making, a
"there are such pretty rooms there."
nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all
Then he took me in his arms and called
manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to
me a blessed little goose, and said he would go
use my will and good sense to check the
down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it
tendency. So I try.
whitewashed into the bargain.
I think sometimes that if I were only well
But he is right enough about the beds and
enough to write a little it would relieve the press
windows and things.
of ideas and rest me.
It is an airy and comfortable room as any
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so
It is so discouraging not to have any
149
advice and companionship about my work.
children could find in a toy-store.
When I get really well, John says we will ask
I remember what a kindly wink the knobs
Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit;
of our big, old bureau used to have, and there
but he says he would as soon put fireworks in
was one chair that always seemed like a strong
my pillow-case as to let me have those
friend.
stimulating people about now.
I used to feel that if any of the other
I wish I could get well faster.
things looked too fierce I could always hop into
But I must not think about that. This
that chair and be safe.
paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious
The furniture in this room is no worse
influence it had!
than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring
There is a recurrent spot where the
it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was
pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous
used as a playroom they had to take the nursery
eyes stare at you upside down.
things out, and no wonder! I never saw such
I get positively angry with the
ravages as the children have made here.
impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn
and down and sideways they crawl, and those
off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother -
absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere There is
- they must have had perseverance as well as
one place where two breaths didn't match, and
hatred.
the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little
Then the floor is scratched and gouged
higher than the other.
and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here
I never saw so much expression in an
and there, and this great heavy bed which is all
inanimate thing before, and we all know how
we found in the room, looks as if it had been
much expression they have! I used to lie awake
through the wars.
as a child and get more entertainment and terror
But I don't mind it a bit -- only the paper.
out of blank walls and plain furniture than most
There comes John's sister. Such a dear
150
girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let
thought it might do me good to see a little
her find me writing.
company, so we just had mother and Nellie and
She is a perfect and enthusiastic
the children down for a week.
housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees
I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which
to everything now.
made me sick!
But it tired me all the same.
But I can write when she is out, and see
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall
her a long way off from these windows.
send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
There is one that commands the road, a
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a
lovely shaded winding road, and one that just
friend who was in his hands once, and she says
looks off over the country. A lovely country,
he is just like John and my brother, only more so!
too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go
This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern
so far.
in a, different shade, a particularly irritating one,
I don't feel as if it was worth while to
for you can only see it in certain lights, and not
turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting
clearly then.
dreadfully fretful and querulous.
But in the places where it isn't faded and
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
where the sun is just so -- I can see a strange,
Of course I don't when John is here, or
provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to
anybody else, but when I am alone.
skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous
And I am alone a good deal just now.
front design.
John is kept in town very often by serious cases,
There's sister on the stairs!
and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I
----------
want her to.
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The
So I walk a little in the garden or down
people are all gone and I am tired out. John
that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses,
151
and lie down up here a good deal.
diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in
I'm getting really fond of the room in
great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of
spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps because of the
wallowing seaweeds in full chase.
wall-paper.
The whole thing goes horizontally, too,
It dwells in my mind so!
at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in
I lie here on this great immovable bed --
trying to distinguish the order of its going in that
it is nailed down, I believe -- and follow that
direction.
pattern about by the hour. It is as good as
They have used a horizontal breadth for a
gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the
frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the
bottom, down in the corner over there where it
confusion.
has not been touched, and I determine for the
There is one end of the room where it is
thousandth time that I will follow that pointless
almost intact, and there, when the crosslights
pattern to some sort of a conclusion.
fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I
I know a little of the principle of design,
can almost fancy radiation after all, -- the
and I know this thing was not arranged on any
interminable grotesques seem to form around a
laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or
common centre and rush off in headlong plunges
symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.
of equal distraction.
It is repeated, of course, by the breadths,
It makes me tired to follow it. I will take
but not otherwise.
a nap I guess.
Looked at in one way each breadth
----------
stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes --
I don't know why I should write this.
a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium
I don't want to.
tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated
I don't feel able. And I know John would
columns of fatuity.
think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and
But, on the other hand, they connect
think in some way -- it is such a relief!
152
But the effort is getting to be greater than
and all he had, and that I must take care of
the relief.
myself for his sake, and keep well.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and
He says no one but myself can help me
lie down ever so much.
out of it, that I must use my will and self-control
John says I mustn't lose my strength, and
and not let any silly fancies run away with me.
has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and
There's one comfort, the baby is well and
things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare
happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery
meat.
with the horrid wall-paper.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and
If we had not used it, that blessed child
hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real
would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I
earnest reasonable talk with him the other day,
wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable
and tell him how I wish he would let me go and
little thing, live in such a room for worlds.
make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
I never thought of it before, but it is
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able
lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand
to stand it after I got there; and I did not make
it so much easier than a baby, you see.
out a very good case for myself, for I was crying
Of course I never mention it to them any
before I had finished .
more -- I am too wise, -- but I keep watch of it
It is getting to be a great effort for me to
all the same.
think straight. Just this nervous weakness I
There are things in that paper that
suppose.
nobody knows but me, or ever will.
And dear John gathered me up in his
Behind that outside pattern the dim
arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on
shapes get clearer every day.
the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired
It is always the same shape, only very
my head.
numerous.
He said I was his darling and his comfort
And it is like a woman stooping down
153
and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't
that I wished he would take me away.
like it a bit. I wonder -- I begin to think -- I wish
"Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be
John would take me away from here!
up in three weeks, and I can't see how to leave
----------
before.
It is so hard to talk with John about my
"The repairs are not done at home, and I
case, because he is so wise, and because he loves
cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course
me so.
if you were in any danger, I could and would, but
But I tried it last night.
you really are better, dear, whether you can see it
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all
or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are
around just as the sun does.
gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so
feel really much easier about you."
slowly, and always comes in by one window or
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as
another.
much; and my appetite may be better in the
John was asleep and I hated to waken
evening when you are here, but it is worse in the
him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on
morning when you are away!"
that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.
"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big
The faint figure behind seemed to shake
hug, "she shall be as sick as she pleases! But
the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.
now let's improve the shining hours by going to
I got up softly and went to feel and see if
sleep, and talk about it in the morning!"
the paper did move, and when I came back John
"And you won't go away?" I asked
was awake.
gloomily.
"What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three
go walking about like that -- you'll get cold."
weeks more and then we will take a nice little
I thought it was a good time to talk, so I
trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the
told him that I really was not gaining here, and
house ready. Really dear you are better!"
154
"Better in body perhaps -- "I began, and
as you get well underway in following, it turns a
stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked
back somersault and there you are. It slaps you
at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I
in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon
could not say another word.
you. It is like a bad dream.
"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for
The outside pattern is a florid arabesque,
my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for
reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a
your own, that you will never for one instant let
toadstool in joints, an interminable string of
that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so
toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless
dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like
convolutions -- why, that is something like it.
yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you
That is, sometimes!
not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?"
There is one marked peculiarity about
So of course I said no more on that score,
this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but
and we went to sleep before long. He thought I
myself, and that is that it changes as the light
was asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for
changes.
hours trying to decide whether that front pattern
When the sun shoots in through the east
and the back pattern really did move together or
window -- I always watch for that first long,
separately.
straight ray -- it changes so quickly that I never
----------
can quite believe it.
On a pattern like this, by daylight, there
That is why I watch it always.
is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a
By moonlight -- the moon shines in all
constant irritant to a normal mind.
night when there is a moon -- I wouldn't know it
The color is hideous enough, and
was the same paper.
unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but
At night in any kind of light, in twilight,
the pattern is torturing.
candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by
You think you have mastered it, but just
moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern
155
I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as
know I was looking, and come into the room
can be.
suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've
I didn't realize for a long time what the
caught him several times looking at the paper!
thing was that showed behind, that dim
And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand
sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a
on it once.
woman.
She didn't know I was in the room, and
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I
when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice,
fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is
with the most restrained manner possible, what
so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.
she was doing with the paper -- she turned
I lie down ever so much now. John says
around as if she had been caught stealing, and
it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
looked quite angry -- asked me why I should
Indeed he started the habit by making me
frighten her so!
lie down for an hour after each meal.
Then she said that the paper stained
It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for
everything it touched, that she had found yellow
you see I don't sleep.
smooches on all my clothes and John's, and she
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell
wished we would be more careful!
them I'm awake -- O no!
Did not that sound innocent? But I know
The fact is I am getting a little afraid of
she was studying that pattern, and I am
John.
determined that nobody shall find it out but
He seems very queer sometimes, and
myself!
even Jennie has an inexplicable look.
----------
It strikes me occasionally, just as a
Life is very much more exciting now
scientific hypothesis, -- that perhaps it is the
than it used to be. You see I have something
paper!
more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I
I have watched John when he did not
really do eat better, and am more quiet than I
156
was.
saw -- not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old
John is so pleased to see me improve! He
foul, bad yellow things.
laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed
But there is something else about that
to be flourishing in spite of my
paper -- the smell! I noticed it the moment we
wall-paper.
came into the room, but with so much air and
I turned it off with a laugh. I had no
sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of
intention of telling him it was because of the
fog and rain, and whether the windows are open
wall-paper -- he would make fun of me. He
or not, the smell is here.
might even want to take me away.
It creeps all over the house.
I don't want to leave now until I have
I find it hovering in the dining-room,
found it out. There is a week more, and I think
skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in
that will be enough.
wait for me on the stairs.
----------
It gets into my hair.
I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't
Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head
sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to
suddenly and surprise it -- there is that smell!
watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent
the daytime.
hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it
In the daytime it is tiresome and
smelled like.
perplexing.
It is not bad -- at first, and very gentle,
There are always new shoots on the
but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever
fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I
met.
cannot keep count of them, though I have tried
In this damp weather it is awful, I wake
conscientiously.
up in the night and find it hanging over me.
It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper!
It used to disturb me at first. I thought
It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever
seriously of burning the house -- to reach the
157
smell.
Then in the very bright spots she keeps
But now I am used to it. The only thing I
still, and in the very shady spots she just takes
can think of that it is like is the color of the
hold of the bars and shakes them hard.
paper! A yellow smell.
And she is all the time trying to climb
There is a very funny mark on this wall,
through. But nobody could climb through that
low down, near the mopboard. A streak that
pattern -- it strangles so; I think that is why it has
runs round the room. It goes behind every piece
so many heads.
of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight,
They get through, and then the pattern
even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and
strangles them off and turns them upside down,
over.
and makes their eyes white!
I wonder how it was done and who did it,
If those heads were covered or taken off
and what they did it for. Round and round and
it would not be half so bad.
round -- round and round and round -- it makes
----------
me dizzy!
I think that woman gets out in the
----------
daytime!
I really have discovered something at
And I'll tell you why -- privately -- I've
last.
seen her!
Through watching so much at night,
I can see her out of every one of my
when it changes so, I have finally found out.
windows!
The front pattern does move -- and no
It is the same woman, I know, for she is
wonder! The woman behind shakes it!
always creeping, and most women do not creep
Sometimes I think there are a great many
by daylight.
women behind, and sometimes only one, and she
I see her on that long road under the
crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all
trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes
over.
she hides under the blackberry vines.
158
I don't blame her a bit. It must be very
There are only two more days to get this
humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!
paper off, and I believe John is beginning to
I always lock the door when I creep by
notice. I don't like the look in his eyes.
daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John
And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of
would suspect something at once.
professional questions about me. She had a very
And John is so queer now, that I don't
good report to give.
want to irritate him. I wish he would take
She said I slept a good deal in the
another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to
daytime.
get that woman out at night but myself.
John knows I don't sleep very well at
I often wonder if I could see her out of all
night, for all I'm so quiet!
the windows at once.
He asked me all sorts of questions, too,
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see
and pretended to be very loving and kind.
out of one at one time.
As if I couldn't see through him!
And though I always see her, she may be
Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping
able to creep faster than I can turn!
under this paper for three months.
I have watched her sometimes away off
It only interests me, but I feel sure John
in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud
and Jennie are secretly affected by it.
shadow in a high wind.
----------
----------
Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is
If only that top pattern could be gotten
enough. John to stay in town over night, and
off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by
won't be out until this evening.
little.
Jennie wanted to sleep with me -- the sly
I have found out another funny thing, but
thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest
I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust
better for a night all alone.
people too much.
That was clever, for really I wasn't alone
159
a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor
down again and sleep all I could; and not to
thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got
wake me even for dinner -- I would call when I
up and ran to help her.
woke.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she
So now she is gone, and the servants are
pulled, and before morning we had peeled off
gone, and the things are gone, and there is
yards of that paper.
nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down,
A strip about as high as my head and half
with the canvas mattress we found on it.
around the room.
We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and
And then when the sun came and that
take the boat home to-morrow.
awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I
I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare
would finish it to-day!
again.
We go away to-morrow, and they are
How those children did tear about here!
moving all my furniture down again to leave
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
things as they were before.
But I must get to work.
Jennie looked at the wall in amazement,
I have locked the door and thrown the
but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure
key down into the front path.
spite at the vicious thing.
I don't want to go out, and I don't want to
She laughed and said she wouldn't mind
have anybody come in, till John comes.
doing it herself, but I must not get tired.
I want to astonish him.
How she betrayed herself that time!
I've got a rope up here that even Jennie
But I am here, and no person touches this
did not find. If that woman does get out, and
paper but me, -- not alive !
tries to get away, I can tie her!
She tried to get me out of the room -- it
But I forgot I could not reach far without
was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and
anything to stand on!
empty and clean now that I believed I would lie
This bed will not move!
160
I tried to lift and push it until I was lame,
It is so pleasant to be out in this great
and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at
room and creep around as I please!
one corner -- but it hurt my teeth.
I don't want to go outside. I won't, even
Then I peeled off all the paper I could
if Jennie asks me to.
reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly
For outside you have to creep on the
and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled
ground, and everything is green instead of
heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus
yellow.
growths just shriek with derision!
But here I can creep smoothly on the
I am getting angry enough to do
floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long
something desperate. To jump out of the
smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my
window would be admirable exercise, but the
way.
bars are too strong even to try.
Why there's John at the door!
Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not.
It is no use, young man, you can't open it!
I know well enough that a step like that is
How he does call and pound!
improper and might be misconstrued.
Now he's crying for an axe.
I don't like to look out of the windows
It would be a shame to break down that
even -- there are so many of those creeping
beautiful door!
women, and they creep so fast.
"John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice,
I wonder if they all come out of that
"the key is down by the front steps, under a
wall-paper as I did?
plantain leaf!"
But I am securely fastened now by my
That silenced him for a few moments.
well-hidden rope -- you don't get me out in the
Then he said -- very quietly indeed,
road there !
"Open the door, my darling!"
I suppose I shall have to get back behind
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the
the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!
front door under a plantain leaf!"
161
And then I said it again, several times,
begging my pardon -- had I been there?
very gently and slowly, and said it so often that
Now the story of the story is this:
he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and
For many years I suffered from a severe
came in. He stopped short by the door.
and continuous nervous breakdown tending to
"What is the matter?" he cried. "For
melancholia -- and beyond. During about the
God's sake, what are you doing!"
third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith
I kept on creeping just the same, but I
and some faint stir of hope, to a noted
looked at him over my shoulder.
specialist in nervous diseases, the best known
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of
in the country. This wise man put me to bed
you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the
and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good
paper, so you can't put me back!"
physique responded so promptly that he
Now why should that man have fainted?
concluded there was nothing much the matter
But he did, and right across my path by the wall,
with me, and sent me home with solemn
so that I had to creep over him every time!
advice to "live as domestic a life as far as
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow
Wallpaper" (1913)
possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual
life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or
This article o riginally appe ared in the O ctober 19
13 issue of The Forerunner.
pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in
Many and many a reader has asked
1887.
that. When the story first came out, in the New
I went home and obeyed those
England Magazine about 1891, a Boston
directions for some three months, and came so
physician made protest in The Transcript.
near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I
Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it
could see over.
was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.
Then, using the remnants of
Another physician, in Kansas I think,
intelligence that remained, and helped by a
wrote to say that it was the best description of
wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice
incipient insanity he had ever seen, and --
162
to the winds and went to work again -- work,
crazy, but to save people from being driven
the normal life of every human being; work, in
crazy, and it worked.
which is joy and growth and service, without
___________________________________________
which one is a pauper and a parasite --
A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Flannery O'Connor
ultimately recovering some measure of power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by
this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow
Wallpaper, with its embellishments and
additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had
hallucinations or objections to my mural
decorations) and sent a copy to the physician
who so nearly drove me mad. He never
acknowledged it.
The little book is valued by alienists
and as a good specimen of one kind of
literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one
woman from a similar fate -- so terrifying her
family that they let her out into normal activity
and she recovered.
But the best result is this. Many years
The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She
wanted to visit some of her connections in east
Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to
change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived
with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his
chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section
of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said,
"see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on
her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at
his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The
Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed
toward Florida and you read here what it says he did
to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my
children in any direction with a criminal like that
aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I
did."
Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled
around then and faced the children's mother, a young
woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and
innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a
green head-kerchief that had two points on the top
like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding
the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have
been to Florida before," the old lady said. "You all
ought to take them somewhere else for a change so
they would see different parts of the world and be
broad. They never have been to east Tennessee."
The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the
eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with
glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why
dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June
Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor.
later I was told that the great specialist had
admitted to friends of his that he had altered
his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The
"She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day,"
June Star said without raising her yellow head.
"Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The
Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked.
Yellow Wallpaper.
"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.
It was not intended to drive people
163
"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June
Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to
go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just remember that the next time you want me to curl your
hair."
various crops that made rows of green lace-work on
the ground. The trees were full of silver-white
sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The
children were reading comic magazines and their
mother and gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to
look at it much," John Wesley said.
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
The next morning the grandmother was the first one
in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise
that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one
corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket
with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the
cat to be left alone in the house for three days
because he would miss her too much and she was
afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners
and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey,
didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with John
Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey
and the children's mother and the baby sat in front
and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the
mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote
this down because she thought it would be interesting
to say how many miles they had been when they got
back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the
outskirts of the city.
The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing
her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her
purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The
children's mother still had on slacks and still had her
head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother
had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of
white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a
small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs
were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her
neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth
violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident,
anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know
at once that she was a lady.
She said she thought it was going to be a good day
for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she
cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five
miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves
behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped
out after you before you had a chance to slow down.
She pointed out interesting details of the scenery:
Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places
came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant
red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the
"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I
wouldn't talk about my native state that way.
Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the
hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John
Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin
veined fingers, "children were more respectful of
their native states and their parents and everything
else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little
pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child
standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make
a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and
looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He
waved
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother
explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have
things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that
picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic books.
The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the
children's mother passed him over the front seat to
her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and
told him about the things they were passing. She
rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck
her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one.
Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They
passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves
fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look
at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it
out. "That was the old family burying ground. That
belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
164
"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha.
Ha."
When the children finished all the comic books they
had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The
grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an
olive and would not let the children throw the box
and the paper napkins out the window. When there
was nothing else to do they played a game by
choosing a cloud and making the other two guess
what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the
shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John
Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he
didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other
over the grandmother.
The grandmother said she would tell them a story if
they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she
rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very
dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady
she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins
Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a
very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he
brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon
with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday,
she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and
there was nobody at home and he left it on the front
porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she
never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger
boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This
story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he
giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was
any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just
brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The
grandmother said she would have done well to marry
Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had
bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and
that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy
man.
They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sandwiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood
filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside
of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran
it and there were signs stuck here and there on the
building and for miles up and down the highway
saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS
BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED
SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE
HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S
YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside
The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray
monkey about a foot high, chained to a small
chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey
sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb
as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car
and run toward him.
Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a
counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing
space in the middle. They all sat down at a board
table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a
tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter
than her skin, came and took their order. The
children's mother put a dime in the machine and
played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother
said that tune always made her want to dance. She
asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only
glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny
disposition like she did and trips made him nervous.
The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She
swayed her head from side to side and pretended she
was dancing in her chair. June Star said play
something she could tap to so the children's mother
put in another dime and played a fast number and
June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her
tap routine.
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over
the counter. "Would you like to come be my little
girl?"
"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't
live in a broken-down place like this for a million
bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her
mouth politely.
"Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging
on the counter and hurry up with these people's order.
His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and
his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal
swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down
at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and
yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and
he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray
handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to
trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are certainly not nice like they used to be,"
said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy
said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but
165
it was a good one and these boys looked all right to
me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let
them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why
did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said
at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were
struck with this answer.
His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates
all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one
balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green
world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I
don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she
repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's
escaped?" asked the grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this
place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about
it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him.
If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't
be a tall surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people
their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the
rest of the order.
"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said.
"Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day
you could go off and leave your screen door
unlatched. Not no more."
He and the grandmother discussed better times. The
old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely
to blame for the way things were now. She said the
way Europe acted you would think we were made of
money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about
it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into
the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the
lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on
himself and biting each one carefully between his
teeth as if it were a delicacy.
They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The
grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few
minutes with her own snoring. Outside of
Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old
plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood
once when she was a young lady. She said the house
had six white columns across the front and that there
was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little
wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where
you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the
garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to
get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing
to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more
she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once
again and find out if the little twin arbors were still
standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house,"
she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that
she were, "and the story went that all the family silver
was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it
was never found . . ."
"Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find
it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who
lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't
we turn off there?"
"We never have seen a house with a secret panel!"
June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the
secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with
the secret panel!"
"It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said.
"It wouldn't take over twenty minutes."
Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as
rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.
The children began to yell and scream that they
wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John
Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June
Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined
desperately into her ear that they never had any fun
even on their vacation, that they could never do what
THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and
John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that
his father could feel the blows in his kidney.
"All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at
the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you
all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up,
we won't go anywhere."
"It would be very educational for them," the
grandmother murmured.
"All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only
time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is
the one and only time."
166
"The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a
mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it
when we passed."
"A dirt road," Bailey groaned.
After they had turned around and were headed
toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other
points about the house, the beautiful glass over the
front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John
Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the
fireplace.
"You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You
don't know who lives there."
"While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run
around behind and get in a window," John Wesley
suggested.
"We'll all stay in the car," his mother said.
They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced
roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The
grandmother recalled the times when there were no
paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The
dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it
and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at
once they would be on a hill, looking down over the
blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next
minute, they would be in a red depression with the
dust-coated trees looking down on them.
"This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey
said, "or I'm going to turn around."
The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in
months.
"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just
as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The
thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in
the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up,
upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the
valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the
basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the
cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.
The children were thrown to the floor and their
mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door
onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the
front seat. The car turned over once and landed rightside-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey
remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped
with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging
to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children saw they could move their
arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car,
shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The
grandmother was curled up under the dashboard,
hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would
not come down on her all at once. The horrible
thought she had had before the accident was that the
house she had remembered so vividly was not in
Georgia but in Tennessee.
Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both
hands and flung it out the window against the side of
a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started
looking for the children's mother. She was sitting
against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the
screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face
and a broken shoulder. "We've had an ACCIDENT!"
the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
"But nobody's killed," June Star said with
disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the
car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken
front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet
spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the
ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock.
They were all shaking.
"Maybe a car will come along," said the children's
mother hoarsely.
"I believe I have injured an organ," said the
grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered
her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a
yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in
it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The
grandmother decided that she would not mention that
the house was in Tennessee.
The road was about ten feet above and they could see
only the tops of the trees on the other side of it.
Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more
woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they
saw a car some distance away on top of a hill,
coming slowly as if the occupants were watching
them. The grandmother stood up and waved both
arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car
continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a
bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top
of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black
battered hearselike automobile. There were three men
in it.
167
It came to a stop just over them and for some
minutes, the driver looked down with a steady
expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and
didn't speak. Then he turned his head and muttered
something to the other two and they got out. One was
a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a
silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved
around on the right side of them and stood staring, his
mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other
had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray
hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He
came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.
The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of
it, looking down at them. He was an older man than
the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and
he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a
scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't
have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans
that were too tight for him and was holding a black
hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns.
"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.
The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the
bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face
was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her
life but she could not recall who he was. He moved
away from the car and began to come down the
embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he
wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no
socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good
afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little
spill."
"We turned over twice!" said the grandmother.
"Once", he corrected. "We seen it happen. Try their
car and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly to the
boy with the gray hat.
"What you got that gun for?" John Wesley asked.
"Whatcha gonna do with that gun?"
"Lady," the man said to the children's mother, "would
you mind calling them children to sit down by you?
Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit
down right together there where you're at."
"Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a
predicament! We're in . . ."
The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet
and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I
recognized you at once!"
"Yes'm," the man said, smiling slightly as if he were
pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would
have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of
reckernized me."
Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to
his mother that shocked even the children. The old
lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.
"Lady," he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a
man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he
meant to talk to you thataway."
"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the
grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief
from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.
The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground
and made a little hole and then covered it up again. "I
would hate to have to," he said.
"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know
you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have
common blood. I know you must come from nice
people!"
"Yes mam," he said, "finest people in the world."
When he smiled he showed a row of strong white
teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my
mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold," he said.
The boy with the red sweat shirt had come around
behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip.
The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch
them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they
make me nervous." He looked at the six of them
huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be
embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to say.
"Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at
it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither."
"What are you telling US what to do for?" June Star
asked.
"Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother.
"Listen," she said, "you shouldn't call yourself The
Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I
can just look at you and tell."
Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark
open mouth. "Come here," said their mother.
"Hush!" Bailey yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up
and let me handle this!" He was squatting in the
168
position of a runner about to sprint forward but he
didn't move.
"I pre-chate that, lady," The Misfit said and drew a
little circle in the ground with the butt of his gun.
"It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram
called, looking over the raised hood of it.
"Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little
boy to step over yonder with you," The Misfit said,
pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The boys want
to ast you something," he said to Bailey. "Would you
mind stepping back in them woods there with them?"
"Listen," Bailey began, "we're in a terrible
predicament! Nobody realizes what this is," and his
voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as
the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.
The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as
if she were going to the woods with him but it came
off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a
second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled
Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old
man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand
and Bobby I,ee followed. They went off toward the
woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey
turned and supporting himself against a gray naked
pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute,
Mamma, wait on me!"
"Come back this instant!" his mother shrilled but they
all disappeared into the woods.
"Bailey Boy!" the grandmother called in a tragic
voice but she found she was looking at The Misfit
squatting on the ground in front of her. "I just know
you're a good man," she said desperately. "You're not
a bit common!"
"Nome, I ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a
second ah if he had considered her statement
carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither.
My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from
my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's
some that can live their whole life out without asking
about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this
boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into
everything!"' He put on his black hat and looked up
suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he
were embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a
shirt before you ladies," he said, hunching his
shoulders slightly. "We buried our clothes that we
had on when we escaped and we're just making do
until we can get better. We borrowed these from
some folks we met," he explained.
"That's perfectly all right," the grandmother said.
"Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase."
"I'll look and see terrectly," The Misfit said.
"Where are they taking him?" the children's mother
screamed.
"Daddy was a card himself," The Misfit said. "You
couldn't put anything over on him. He never got in
trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the
knack of handling them."
"You could be honest too if you'd only try," said the
grandmother. "Think how wonderful it would be to
settle down and live a comfortable life and not have
to think about somebody chasing you all the time."
The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt
of his gun as if he were thinking about it. "Yestm,
somebody is always after you," he murmured.
The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder
blades were just behind his hat because she was
standing up looking down on him. "Do you every
pray?" she asked.
He shook his head. All she saw was the black hat
wiggle between his shoulder blades. "Nome," he said.
There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed
closely by another. Then silence. The old lady's head
jerked around. She could hear the wind move through
the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath.
"Bailey Boy!" she called.
"I was a gospel singer for a while," The Misfit said.
"I been most everything. Been in the arm service both
land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married,
been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed
Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt
alive oncet," and he looked up at the children's
mother and the little girl who were sitting close
together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I
even seen a woman flogged," he said.
"Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ."
169
I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The
Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but
somewheres along the line I done something wrong
and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive,"
and he looked up and held her attention to him by a
steady stare.
"That's when you should have started to pray," she
said. "What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary
that first time?"
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said,
looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the
left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look
down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set
there and set there, trying to remember what it was I
done and I ain't recalled it to this day. Oncet in a
while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never
come."
"Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said.
The shirt came flying at him and landed on his
shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn't
name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The
Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, "I found out
the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you
can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car,
because sooner or later you're going to forget what it
was you done and just be punished for it."
The children's mother had begun to make heaving
noises as if she couldn't get her breath. "Lady," he
asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off
yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your
husband?"
"Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady said
vaguely.
"Yes, thank you," the mother said faintly. Her left
arm dangled helplessly and she was holding the baby,
who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady
up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb
out of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that
little girl's hand."
"Nome," he said. "It wasn't no mistake. They had the
papers on me."
"I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said.
"He reminds me of a pig."
"You must have stolen something," she said.
The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by
the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram
and her mother.
The Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I
wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the
penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy
but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen
ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a
thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount
Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there
and see for yourself."
"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would
help you."
"That's right," The Misfit said.
"Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked
trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don't want no hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by
myself."
Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the
woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with
bright blue parrots in it.
Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that
she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the
sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but
woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She
opened and closed her mouth several times before
anything came out. Finally she found herself saying,
"Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the
way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be
cursing.
"Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus shown
everything off balance. It was the same case with
Him as with me except He hadn't committed any
crime and they could prove I had committed one
because they had the papers on me. Of course," he
said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I
sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a
signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy
of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can
hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they
match and in the end you'll have something to prove
you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit,"
he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong
fit what all I gone through in punishment."
170
There was a piercing scream from the woods,
followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem
right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and
another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I
know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come
from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot
a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into
the woods, "there never was a body that give the
undertaker a tip."
There were two more pistol reports and the
grandmother raised her head like a parched old
turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy,
Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break.
"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,"
The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it.
He shown everything off balance. If He did what He
said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away
everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's
nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you
got left the best way you can by killing somebody or
burning down his house or doing some other
meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said
and his voice had become almost a snarl.
"Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady
mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and
feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with
her legs twisted under her.
"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit
said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the
ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there
because if I had of been there I would of known.
Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been
there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am
now." His voice seemed about to crack and the
grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw
the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were
going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of
my babies. You're one of my own children !" She
reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The
Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and
shot her three times through the chest. Then he put
his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses
and began to clean them.
Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and
stood over the ditch, looking down at the
grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of
blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's
and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were redrimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her
off and thow her where you thown the others," he
said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against
his leg.
"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said,
sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said,
"if it had been somebody there to shoot her every
minute of her life."
"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.
"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real
pleasure in life."
___________________________________________
The Fly
Katherine Mansfield
"Y'are very snug in here," piped old Mr. Woodifield,
and he peered out of the great, green-leather armchair
by his friend the boss's desk as a baby peers out of its
pram. His talk was over; it was time for him to be off.
But he did not want to go. Since he had retired, since
his...stroke, the wife and the girls kept him boxed up
in the house every day of the week except Tuesday.
On Tuesday he was dressed and brushed and allowed
to cut back to the City for the day. Though what he
did there the wife and girls couldn't imagine. Made a
nuisance of himself to his friends, they
supposed....Well, perhaps so. All the same, we cling
to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last
leaves. So there sat old Woodifield, smoking a cigar
and staring almost greedily at the boss, who rolled in
his office chair, stout, rosy, five years older than he,
and still going strong, still at the helm. It did one
good to see him.
Wistfully, admiringly, the old voice added, "It's snug
in here, upon my word!"
"Yes, it's comfortable enough," agreed the boss, and
he flipped the Financial Times with a paper-knife. As
a matter of fact he was proud of his room; he liked to
have it admired, especially by old Woodifield. It gave
him a feeling of deep, solid satisfaction to be planted
171
there in the midst of it in full view of that frail old
figure in the muffler.
"I've had it done up lately," he explained, as he had
explained for the past -- how many? -- weeks. "New
carpet," and he pointed to the bright red carpet with a
pattern of large white rings. "New furniture," and he
nodded towards the massive bookcase and the table
with legs like twisted treacle. "Electric heating!" He
waved almost exultantly towards the five transparent,
pearly sausages glowing so softly in the tilted copper
pan.
But he did not draw old Woodifield's attention to the
photograph over the table of a grave-looking boy in
uniform standing in one of those spectral
photographers' parks with photographers' stormclouds behind him. It was not new. It had been there
for over six years.
"There was something I wanted to tell you," said old
Woodifield, and his eyes grew dim remembering.
"Now what was it? I had it in my mind when I started
out this morning." His hands began to tremble, and
patches of red showed above his beard.
Poor old chap, he's on his last pins, thought the boss.
And, feeling kindly, he winked at the old man, and
said jokingly, "I tell you what. I've got a little drop of
something here that'll do you good before you go out
into the cold again. It's beautiful stuff. It wouldn't
hurt a child." He took a key off his watch-chain,
unlocked a cupboard below his desk, and drew forth
a dark, squat bottle. "That's the medicine," said he.
"And the man from whom I got it told me on the
strict Q.T. it came from the cellars at Windor Castle."
Old Woodifield's mouth fell open at the sight. He
couldn't have looked more surprised if the boss had
produced a rabbit.
"It's whisky, ain't it?" he piped feebly.
The boss turned the bottle and lovingly showed him
the label. Whisky it was.
"D'you know," said he, peering up at the boss
wonderingly, "they won't let me touch it at home."
And he looked as though he was going to cry.
"Ah, that's where we know a bit more than the
ladies," cried the boss, swooping across for two
tumblers that stood on the table with the water-bottle,
and pouring a generous finger into each. "Drink it
down. It'll do you good. And don't put any water with
it. It's sacrilege to tamper with stuff like this. Ah!" He
tossed off his, pulled out his handkerchief, hastily
wiped his moustaches, and cocked an eye at old
Woodifield, who was rolling his in his chaps.
The old man swallowed, was silent a moment, and
then said faintly, "It's nutty!"
But it warmed him; it crept into his chill old brain -he remembered.
"That was it," he said, heaving himself out of his
chair. "I thought you'd like to know. The girls were in
Belgium last week having a look at poor Reggie's
grave, and they happened to come across your boy's.
They're quite near each other, it seems."
Old Woodifield paused, but the boss made no reply.
Only a quiver in his eyelids showed that he heard.
"The girls were delighted with the way the place is
kept," piped the old voice. "Beautifully looked after.
Couldn't be better if they were at home. You've not
been across, have yer?"
"No, no!" For various reasons the boss had not been
across.
"There's miles of it," quavered old Woodifield, "and
it's all as neat as a garden. Flowers growing on all the
graves. Nice broad paths." It was plain from his voice
how much he liked a nice broad path.
The pause came again. Then the old man brightened
wonderfully.
"D'you know what the hotel made the girls pay for a
pot of jam?" he piped. "Ten francs! Robbery, I call it.
It was a little pot, so Gertrude says, no bigger than a
half-crown. And she hadn't taken more than a
spoonful when they charged her ten francs. Gertrude
brought the pot away with her to teach 'em a lesson.
Quite right, too; it's trading on our feelings. They
think because we're over there having a look round
we're ready to pay anything. That's what it is." And
he turned towards the door.
"Quite right, quite right!" cried the boss, though what
was quite right he hadn't the least idea. He came
round by his desk, followed the shuffling footsteps to
the door, and saw the old fellow out. Woodifield was
gone.
172
For a long moment the boss stayed, staring at
nothing, while the grey-haired office messenger,
watching him, dodged in and out of his cubby-hole
like a dog that expects to be taken for a run. Then:
"I'll see nobody for half an hour, Macey," said the
boss. "Understand? Nobody at all."
"Very good, sir."
The door shut, the firm heavy steps recrossed the
bright carpet, the fat body plumped down in the
spring chair, and leaning forward, the boss covered
his face with his hands. He wanted, he intended, he
had arranged to weep....
It had been a terrible shock to him when old
Woodifield sprang that remark upon him about the
boy's grave. It was exactly as though the earth had
opened and he had seen the boy lying there with
Woodifield's girls staring down at him. For it was
strange. Although over six years had passed away,
the boss never thought of the boy except as lying
unchanged, unblemished in his uniform, asleep for
ever. "My son!" groaned the boss. But no tears came
yet. In the past, in the first few months and even
years after the boy's death, he had only to say those
words to be overcome by such grief that nothing
short of a violent fit of weeping could relieve him.
Time, he had declared then, he had told everybody,
could make no difference. Other men perhaps might
recover, might live their loss down, but not he. How
was it possible? His boy was an only son. Ever since
his birth the boss had worked at building up this
business for him; it had no other meaning if it was
not for the boy. Life itself had come to have no other
meaning. How on earth could he have slaved, denied
himself, kept going all those years without the
promise for ever before him of the boy's stepping into
his shoes and carrying on where he left off?
And that promise had been so near being fulfilled.
The boy had been in the office learning the ropes for
a year before the war. Every morning they had started
off together; they had come back by the same train.
And what congratulations he had received as the
boy's father! No wonder; he had taken to it
marvellously. As to his popularity with the staff,
every man jack of them down to old Macey couldn't
make enough of the boy. And he wasn't the least
spoilt. No, he was just his bright natural self, with the
right word for everybody, with that boyish look and
his habit of saying, "Simply splendid!"
But all that was over and done with as though it never
had been. The day had come when Macey had
handed him the telegram that brought the whole place
crashing about his head. "Deeply regret to inform
you..." And he had left the office a broken man, with
his life in ruins.
Six years ago, six years....How quickly time passed!
It might have happened yesterday. The boss took his
hands from his face; he was puzzled. Something
seemed to be wrong with him. He wasn't feeling as he
wanted to feel. He decided to get up and have a look
at the boy's photograph. But it wasn't a favourite
photograph of his; the expression was unnatural. It
was cold, even stern-looking. The boy had never
looked like that.
At that moment the boss noticed that a fly had fallen
into his broad inkpot, and was trying feebly but
deperately to clamber out again. Help! help! said
those struggling legs. But the sides of the inkpot were
wet and slippery; it fell back again and began to
swim. The boss took up a pen, picked the fly out of
the ink, and shook it on to a piece of blotting-paper.
For a fraction of a second it lay still on the dark patch
that oozed round it. Then the front legs waved, took
hold, and, pulling its small, sodden body up, it began
the immense task of cleaning the ink from its wings.
Over and under, over and under, went a leg along a
wing, as the stone goes over and under the scythe.
Then there was a pause, while the fly, seeming to
stand on the tips of its toes, tried to expand first one
wing and then the other. It succeeded at last, and,
sitting down, it began, like a minute cat, to clean its
face. Now one could imagine that the little front legs
rubbed against each other lightly, joyfully. The
horrible danger was over; it had escaped; 1t was
ready for life again.
But just then the boss had an idea. He plunged his
pen back into the ink, leaned his thick wrist on the
blotting-paper, and as the fly tried its wings down
came a great heavy blot. What would it make of that?
What indeed! The little beggar seemed absolutely
cowed, stunned, and afraid to move because of what
would happen next. But then, as if painfully, it
dragged itself forward. The front legs waved, caught
hold, and, more slowly this time, the task began from
the beginning.
He's a plucky little devil, thought the boss, and he felt
a real admiration for the fly's courage. That was the
way to tackle things; that was the right spirit. Never
say die; it was only a question of...But the fly had
again finished its laborious task, and the boss had just
time to refill his pen, to shake fair and square on the
new-cleaned body yet another dark drop. What about
173
it this time? A painful moment of suspense followed.
But behold, the front legs were again waving; the
boss felt a rush of relief. He leaned over the fly and
said to it tenderly, "You artful little b..." And he
actually had the brilliant notion of breathing on it to
help the drying process. All the same, there was
something timid and weak about its efforts now, and
the boss decided that this time should be the last, as
he dipped the pen deep into the inkpot.
It was. The last blot fell on the soaked blotting-paper,
and the draggled fly lay in it and did not stir. The
back legs were stuck to the body; the front legs were
not to be seen.
"Come on," said the boss. "Look sharp!" And he
stirred it with his pen -- in vain. Nothing happened or
was likely to happen. The fly was dead.
The boss lifted the corpse on the end of the paperknife and flung it into the waste-paper basket. But
such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him
that he felt positively frightened. He started forward
and pressed the bell for Macey.
"Bring me some fresh blotting-paper," he said
sternly,"and look sharp about it." And while the old
dog padded away he fell to wondering what it was he
had been thinking about before. What was it? It
was...He took out his handkerchief and passed it
inside his collar. For the life of him he could not
remember.
___________________________________________
Franz Kafka
In the Penal Colony
“It’s a remarkable apparatus,” said the Officer to the
Explorer and gazed with a certain look of admiration
at the device, with which he was, of course,
thoroughly familiar. It appeared that the Traveller
had responded to the invitation of the Commandant
only out of politeness, when he had been asked to
attend the execution of a soldier condemned for
disobeying and insulting his superior. Interest in this
execution was not really very high even in the penal
colony itself. At least, here in the small, deep, sandy
valley, closed in on all sides by barren slopes, apart
from the Officer and the Traveller there were present
only the Condemned, a vacant-looking man with a
broad mouth and dilapidated hair and face, and the
Soldier, who held the heavy chain to which were
connected the small chains which bound the
Condemned Man by his feet and wrist bones, as well
as by his neck, and which were also linked to each
other by connecting chains. The Condemned Man,
incidentally, had an expression of such dog-like
resignation that it looked as if one could set him free
to roam around the slopes and would only have to
whistle at the start of the execution for him to return.
The Traveller had little interest in the apparatus and
walked back and forth behind the Condemned Man,
almost visibly indifferent, while the Officer took care
of the final preparations. Sometimes he crawled
under the apparatus, which was built deep into the
earth, and sometimes he climbed up a ladder to
inspect the upper parts. These were jobs which really
could have been left to a mechanic, but the Officer
carried them out with great enthusiasm, maybe
because he was particularly fond of this apparatus or
maybe because there was some other reason why the
work could not be entrusted to anyone else. “It’s all
ready now!” he finally cried and climbed back down
the ladder. He was unusually tired, breathing with his
mouth wide open, and he had pushed two fine lady’s
handkerchiefs under the collar of his uniform at the
back. “These uniforms are really too heavy for the
tropics,” the Traveller said, instead of asking some
questions about the apparatus, as the Officer had
expected. “That’s true,” said the Officer. He washed
the oil and grease from his dirty hands in a bucket of
water standing ready, “But they mean home, and we
don’t want to lose our homeland.” “Now, have a look
at this apparatus,” he added immediately, drying his
hands with a towel and at the same time pointing to
the apparatus. “Up to this point I still had to do some
work by hand, but from now on the apparatus works
entirely on its own.” The Traveller nodded and
followed the Officer. The latter tried to protect
himself against all eventualities by saying, “Of
course, breakdowns do happen. I really hope none
will occur today, but we must be prepared for them.
The apparatus is supposed to keep going for twelve
hours without interruption. But if any breakdowns
occur, they are only very minor, and will be dealt
with right away.”
“Don’t you want to sit down?” he asked finally. He
pulled out a chair from a pile of cane chairs and
offered it to the Traveller. The latter could not refuse.
He was now sitting on the edge of a pit, into which he
cast a fleeting glance. It was not very deep. On one
side of the hole the piled earth was heaped up into a
wall; on the other side stood the apparatus. “I don’t
know,” the Officer said, “whether the Commandant
has already explained the apparatus to you.” The
Traveller made a vague gesture with his hand. That
was good enough for the Officer, for now he could
174
explain the apparatus himself. “This apparatus,” he
said, grasping a connecting rod and leaning against it,
“is our previous Commandant’s invention. I also
worked with him on the very first tests and took part
in all the work right up to its completion. However,
the credit for the invention belongs entirely to him
alone. Have you heard of our previous Commandant?
No? Well, I’m not claiming too much when I say that
the organization of the entire penal colony is his
work. We, his friends, already knew at the time of his
death that the administration of the colony was so
self-contained that even if his successor had a
thousand new plans in mind, he would not be able to
alter anything of the old plan, at least not for several
years. And our prediction has held. The New
Commandant has had to recognize that. It’s a shame
that you didn’t know the previous Commandant!”
“However,” the Officer said, interrupting himself,
“I’m chattering, and his apparatus stands here in front
of us. As you see, it consists of three parts. With the
passage of time certain popular names have been
developed for each of these parts. The one
underneath is called the Bed, the upper one is called
the Inscriber, and here in the middle, this moving part
is called the Harrow.” “The Harrow?” the Traveller
asked. He had not been listening with full attention.
The sun was excessively strong, trapped in the
shadowless valley, and one could hardly collect one’s
thoughts. So the Officer appeared to him all the more
admirable in his tight tunic weighed down with
epaulettes and festooned with braid, ready to go on
parade, as he explained the matter so eagerly and, in
addition, while he was talking, still kept adjusting
screws here and there with a screwdriver. The Soldier
appeared to be in a state similar to the Traveller. He
had wound the Condemned Man’s chain around both
his wrists and was supporting himself with his hand
on his weapon, letting his head hang backward, not
bothering about anything. The Traveller was not
surprised at that, for the Officer spoke French, and
clearly neither the Soldier nor the Condemned Man
understood the language. So it was certainly all the
more striking that the Condemned Man, in spite of
that, did what he could to follow the Officer’s
explanations. With a sort of sleepy persistence he
kept directing his gaze to the place where the Officer
had just pointed, and when a question from the
Traveller interrupted the Officer, the Condemned
Man looked at the Traveller, too, just as the Officer
was doing.
“Yes, the Harrow,” said the Officer. “The name fits.
The needles are arranged as in a harrow, and the
whole thing is driven like a harrow, although it stays
in one place and is, in principle, much more artistic.
Anyway, you’ll understand in a moment. The
condemned is laid out here on the Bed. I’ll describe
the apparatus first and only then let the procedure go
to work. That way you’ll be able to follow it better.
Also a sprocket in the Inscriber is excessively worn.
It really squeaks. When it’s in motion one can hardly
make oneself understood. Unfortunately replacement
parts are difficult to come by in this place. So, here is
the Bed, as I said. The whole thing is completely
covered with a layer of cotton wool, the purpose of
which you’ll find out in a moment. The condemned
man is laid out on his stomach on this cotton wool—
naked, of course. There are straps for the hands here,
for the feet here, and for the throat here, to tie him in
securely. At the head of the Bed here, where the man,
as I have mentioned, first lies face down, is this small
protruding lump of felt, which can easily be adjusted
so that it presses right into the man’s mouth. Its
purpose is to prevent him screaming and biting his
tongue to pieces. Of course, the man has to let the felt
in his mouth—otherwise the straps around his throat
will break his neck.” “That’s cotton wool?” asked the
Traveller and bent down. “Yes, it is,” said the Officer
smiling, “feel it for yourself.” He took the Traveller’s
hand and led him over to the Bed. “It’s a specially
prepared cotton wool. That’s why it looks so
unrecognizable. I’ll get around to mentioning its
purpose in a moment.” The Traveller was already
being won over a little to the apparatus. With his
hand over his eyes to protect them from the sun, he
looked up at the height of the apparatus. It was a
massive construction. The Bed and the Inscriber were
the same size and looked like two dark chests. The
Inscriber was set about two metres above the Bed,
and the two were joined together at the corners by
four brass rods, which almost reflected rays from the
sun. The Harrow hung between the chests on a band
of steel.
The Officer had hardly noticed the earlier
indifference of the Traveller, but he did have a sense
now of how the latter’s interest was being aroused
now. So he paused in his explanation in order to
allow the Traveller time to observe the apparatus
undisturbed. The Condemned Man imitated the
Traveller, but since he could not put his hand over his
eyes, he blinked upward with his eyes uncovered.
“So now the man is lying down,” said the Traveller.
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.
“Yes,” said the Officer. He pushed his cap back a
little and ran his hand over his hot face. “Now, listen.
Both the Bed and the Inscriber have their own
electric batteries. The Bed needs them for itself, and
the Inscriber for the Harrow. As soon as the man is
175
strapped in securely, the Bed is set in motion. It
quivers with tiny, very rapid oscillations from side to
side and up and down simultaneously. You will have
seen similar devices in mental hospitals. Only with
our Bed all movements are precisely calibrated, for
they must be meticulously coordinated with the
movements of the Harrow. But it’s the Harrow which
has the job of actually carrying out the sentence.”
“What is the sentence?” the Traveller asked. “You
don’t even know that?” asked the Officer in
astonishment and bit his lip. “Forgive me if my
explanations are perhaps confused. I really do beg
your pardon. Previously it was the Commandant’s
habit to provide such explanations. But the New
Commandant has excused himself from this
honourable duty. However, the fact that with such an
eminent visitor”—the Traveller tried to deflect the
honour with both hands, but the Officer insisted on
the expression—“that with such an eminent visitor he
didn’t even once make him aware of the form of our
sentencing is yet again something new, which. . . .”
He had a curse on his lips, but controlled himself and
said merely: “I was not informed about it. It’s not my
fault. In any case, I am certainly the person best able
to explain our style of sentencing, for here I am
carrying”—he patted his breast pocket—“the relevant
diagrams drawn by the previous Commandant.”
“Diagrams made by the Commandant himself?”
asked the Traveller. “Then was he in his own person
a combination of everything? Was he soldier, judge,
engineer, chemist, and draftsman?”
“He was indeed,” said the Officer, nodding his head
with a fixed and thoughtful expression. Then he
looked at his hands, examining them. They didn’t
seem to him clean enough to handle the diagrams. So
he went to the bucket and washed them again. Then
he pulled out a small leather folder and said, “Our
sentence does not sound severe. The law which a
condemned man has violated is inscribed on his body
with the Harrow. This Condemned Man, for
example,” and the Officer pointed to the man, “will
have inscribed on his body, ‘Honour your
superiors!’”
The Traveller had a quick look at the man. When the
Officer was pointing at him, the man kept his head
down and appeared to be directing all his energy into
listening in order to learn something. But the
movements of his pouting lips, which were pressed
close together, showed clearly that he was incapable
of understanding anything. The Traveller wanted to
raise various questions, but after looking at the
Condemned Man he merely asked, “Does he know
his sentence?” “No,” said the Officer. He wished to
get on with his explanation right away, but the
Traveller interrupted him: “He doesn’t know his own
sentence?” “No,” said the Officer once more. He then
paused for a moment, as if he was requesting from
the Traveller a more detailed reason for his question,
and said, “It would be useless to give him that
information. He experiences it on his own body.” The
Traveller really wanted to keep quiet at this point, but
he felt how the Condemned Man was gazing at
him—he seemed to be asking whether he could
approve of the process the Officer had described. So
the Traveller, who had up to this point been leaning
back, bent forward again and kept up his questions,
“But does he nonetheless have some general idea that
he’s been condemned?” “Not that either,” said the
Officer, and he smiled at the Traveller, as if he was
still waiting for some strange revelations from him.
“No?” said the Traveller, wiping his forehead, “So
the man does not yet know even at this point how his
defence was received?” “He has had no opportunity
to defend himself,” said the Officer and looked away,
as if he was talking to himself and did not wish to
embarrass the Traveller with an explanation of
matters so self-evident to him. “But he must have had
a chance to defend himself,” said the Traveller and
stood up from his chair.
The Officer recognized that he was in danger of
having his explanation of the apparatus held up for a
long time. So he went to the Traveller, took him by
the arm, pointed with his hand at the Condemned
Man, who stood there stiffly now that the attention
was so clearly directed at him—the Soldier was also
pulling on his chain—and said, “The matter stands
like this. Here in the penal colony I have been
appointed judge. In spite of my youth. For I stood at
the side of our previous Commandant in all matters
of punishment, and I also know the most about the
apparatus. The basic principle I use for my decisions
is this: Guilt is always beyond a doubt. Other courts
could not follow this principle, for they are made up
of many heads and, in addition, have even higher
courts above them. But that is not the case here, or at
least it was not that way with the previous
Commandant. It’s true the New Commandant has
already shown a desire to get mixed up in my court,
but I’ve succeeded so far in fending him off. And I’ll
continue to be successful. You wanted this case
explained. It’s so simple—just like all of them. This
morning a captain laid a charge that this man, who is
assigned to him as a servant and who sleeps before
his door, had been sleeping on duty. For his duty is to
stand up every time the clock strikes the hour and
salute in front of the captain’s door. That’s certainly
176
not a difficult duty—and it’s necessary, since he is
supposed to remain fresh both for guarding and for
service. Yesterday night the captain wanted to check
whether his servant was fulfilling his duty. He
opened the door on the stroke of two and found him
curled up asleep. He got his horsewhip and hit him
across the face. Now, instead of standing up and
begging for forgiveness, the man grabbed his master
by the legs, shook him, and cried out, ‘Throw away
that whip or I’ll eat you up.’ Those are the facts. The
captain came to me an hour ago. I wrote up his
statement and right after that the sentence. Then I had
the man chained up. It was all very simple. If I had
first summoned the man and interrogated him, the
result would have been confusion. He would have
lied, and if I had been successful in refuting his lies,
he would have replaced them with new lies, and so
forth. But now I have him, and I won’t release him
again. Now, does that clarify everything? But time is
passing. We should be starting the execution already,
and I haven’t finished explaining the apparatus yet.”
He urged the Traveller to sit down in his chair,
moved to the apparatus again, and started, “As you
see, the shape of the Harrow corresponds to the shape
of a man. This is the harrow for the upper body, and
here are the harrows for the legs. This small cutter is
the only one designated for the head. Is that clear to
you?” He leaned forward to the Traveller in a
friendly way, ready to give the most comprehensive
explanation.
The Traveller looked at the Harrow with a wrinkled
frown. The information about the judicial procedures
had not satisfied him. However, he had to tell himself
that here it was a matter of a penal colony, that in this
place special regulations were necessary, and that one
had to give precedence to military measures right
down to the last detail. Beyond that, however, he had
some hopes in the New Commandant, who
obviously, although slowly, was intending to
introduce a new procedure which the limited
understanding of this Officer could not accept.
Following this train of thought, the Traveller asked,
“Will the Commandant be present at the execution?”
“That is not certain,” said the Officer, embarrassingly
affected by the sudden question, and his friendly
expression made a grimace. “That is why we need to
hurry up. As much as I regret the fact, I’ll have to
make my explanation even shorter. But tomorrow,
once the apparatus is clean again—the fact that it gets
so very dirty is its only fault—I could add a more
detailed explanation. So now, only the most essential
things. When the man is lying on the Bed and it starts
quivering, the Harrow sinks onto the body. It
positions itself automatically in such a way that it
touches the body only lightly with the needle tips.
Once the machine is set in position, this steel cable
tightens up immediately into a rod. And now the
performance begins. Someone who is not an initiate
sees no external difference among the punishments.
The Harrow seems to do its work uniformly. As it
quivers, it sticks the tips of its needles into the body,
which is also vibrating from the movement of the
bed. Now, to enable someone to check on how the
sentence is being carried out, the Harrow is made of
glass. That gave rise to certain technical difficulties
with fastening the needles in it securely, but after
several attempts we were successful. We didn’t spare
any efforts. And now, as the inscription is made on
the body, everyone can see through the glass. Don’t
you want to come closer and see the needles for
yourself.”
The Traveller stood slowly, moved up, and bent over
the Harrow. “You see,” the Officer said, “two sorts of
needles in a multiple arrangement. Each long needle
has a short one next to it. The long one inscribes, and
the short one squirts water out to wash away the
blood and keep the inscription always clear. The
bloody water is then channeled here into small
grooves and finally flows into these main gutters, and
their outlet pipe takes it to the pit.” The Officer
indicated with his finger the exact path which the
bloody water had to take. As he began formally to
demonstrate with both hands at the mouth of the
outlet pipe, in order to make his account as clear as
possible, the Traveller raised his head and, feeling
behind him with his hand, wanted to return to his
chair. Then he saw to his horror that the Condemned
Man had also, like him, accepted the Officer’s
invitation to inspect the arrangement of the Harrow
up close. He had pulled the sleeping Soldier holding
the chain a little forward and was also bending over
the glass. One could see how with a confused gaze he
also was looking for what the two gentlemen had just
observed, but how he didn’t succeed because he
lacked the explanation. He leaned forward this way
and that. He kept running his eyes over the glass
again and again. The Traveller wanted to push him
back, for what he was doing was probably
punishable. But the Officer held the Traveller firmly
with one hand, and with the other he took a lump of
earth from the wall and threw it at the Soldier. The
latter opened his eyes with a start, saw what the
Condemned Man had dared to do, let his weapon fall,
braced his heels in the earth, and jerked the
Condemned Man back, so that he immediately
collapsed. The Soldier looked down at him, as he
writhed around, making his chain clink. “Stand him
up,” cried the Officer, for he noticed that the
Condemned Man was distracting the Traveller too
much. The latter was even leaning out away from the
177
Harrow, without paying any attention to it and
wanted merely to find out what was happening to the
Condemned Man. “Handle him carefully,” the
Officer yelled again. He ran around the apparatus,
personally grabbed the Condemned Man under the
armpits and, with the help of the Soldier, straightened
up the man, whose feet kept slipping.
“Now I know all about it,” said the Traveller, as the
Officer turned back to him again. “Except the most
important thing,” said the latter. He grabbed the
Traveller by the arm and pointed up high. “There in
the Inscriber is the mechanism which determines the
movement of the Harrow, and this mechanism is
arranged according to the diagram on which the
sentence is set down. I still use the diagrams of the
previous Commandant. Here they are.” He pulled
some pages out of the leather folder. “Unfortunately I
can’t hand them to you. They are the most cherished
thing I possess. Sit down, and I’ll show you them
from this distance. Then you’ll be able to see it all
well.” He showed the first sheet. The Traveller would
have been happy to say something appreciative, but
all he saw was a labyrinthine series of lines,
crisscrossing each other in all sorts of ways. These
covered the paper so thickly that only with difficulty
could one make out the white spaces in between.
“Read it,” said the Officer. “I can’t,” said the
Traveller. “But it’s clear,” said the Officer.” “It’s
very elaborate,” said the Traveller evasively, “but I
can’t decipher it.” “Yes,” said the Officer, smiling
and putting the folder back again, “it’s not
calligraphy for school children. One has to read it a
long time. You, too, would finally understand it
clearly. Of course, it has to be a script that isn’t
simple. You see, it’s not supposed to kill right away,
but on average over a period of twelve hours. The
turning point is set for the sixth hour. There must also
be many, many embellishments surrounding the basic
script. The essential script moves around the body
only in a narrow belt. The rest of the body is reserved
for decoration. Can you now appreciate the work of
the Harrow and of the whole apparatus? Just look at
it!” He jumped up the ladder, turned a wheel, and
called down, “Watch out—move to the side!”
Everything started moving. If the wheel had not
squeaked, it would have been marvellous. The
Officer threatened the wheel with his fist, as if he was
surprised by the disturbance it created. Then he
spread his arms out to the Traveller, apologized, and
quickly clambered down, in order to observe the
operation of the apparatus from below. Something
was still not working properly, something only he
noticed. He clambered up again and reached with
both hands into the inside of the Inscriber. Then, in
order to descend more quickly, instead of using the
ladder, he slid down on one of the poles and, to make
himself understandable through the noise, strained his
voice to the limit as he yelled in the Traveller’s ear,
“Do you understand the process? The Harrow is
starting to write. When it’s finished with the first part
of the script on the man’s back, the layer of cotton
wool rolls and turns the body slowly onto its side to
give the Harrow a new area. Meanwhile those parts
lacerated by the inscription are lying on the cotton
wool which, because it has been specially treated,
immediately stops the bleeding and prepares the
script for a further deepening. Here, as the body
continues to rotate, prongs on the edge of the Harrow
then pull the cotton wool from the wounds, throw it
into the pit, and the Harrow goes to work again. In
this way it keeps making the inscription deeper for
twelve hours. For the first six hours the condemned
man goes on living almost as before. He suffers
nothing but pain. After two hours, the felt is
removed, for at that point the man has no more
energy for screaming. Here at the head of the Bed
warm rice pudding is put in this electrically heated
bowl. From this the man, if he feels like it, can help
himself to what he can lap up with his tongue. No
one passes up this opportunity. I don’t know of a
single one, and I have had a lot of experience. He
first loses his pleasure in eating around the sixth
hour. I usually kneel down at this point and observe
the phenomenon. The man rarely swallows the last
bit. He merely turns it around in his mouth and spits
it into the pit. When he does that, I have to lean aside
or else he’ll get me in the face. But how quiet the
man becomes around the sixth hour! The most stupid
of them begins to understand. It starts around the
eyes and spreads out from there. A look that could
tempt one to lie down with him under the Harrow.
Nothing else happens. The man simply begins to
decipher the inscription. He purses his lips, as if he is
listening. You’ve seen that it is not easy to figure out
the inscription with your eyes, but our man deciphers
it with his wounds. True, it takes a lot of work. It
requires six hours to complete. But then the Harrow
spits all of him out and throws him into the pit, where
he splashes down into the bloody water and cotton
wool. Then the judgment is over, and we, the Soldier
and I, quickly bury him.”
The Traveller had leaned his ear towards the Officer
and, with his hands in his coat pockets, was
observing the machine at work. The Condemned Man
was also watching, but without understanding. He
bent forward a little and followed the moving
needles, as the Soldier, after a signal from the
Officer, cut through the back of his shirt and trousers
with a knife, so that they fell off the Condemned
Man. He wanted to grab the falling garments to cover
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his bare flesh, but the Soldier held him up high and
shook the last rags from him. The Officer turned the
machine off, and in the silence which then ensued the
Condemned Man was laid out under the Harrow. The
chains were taken off and the straps fastened in their
place. For the Condemned Man it seemed at first
glance to signify almost a relief. And now the
Harrow sunk down a stage lower still, for he was a
thin man. As the needle tips touched him, a shudder
went over his skin. While the Soldier was busy with
the right hand, the Condemned Man stretched out his
left, with no sense of its direction. But it was pointing
to where the Traveller was standing. The Officer kept
looking at the Traveller from the side, without taking
his eyes off him, as if he was trying to read from his
face the impression he was getting of the execution,
which he had now explained to him, at least
superficially.
The strap meant to hold the wrist ripped off. The
Soldier probably had pulled on it too hard. The
Soldier showed the Officer the torn-off piece of strap,
wanting him to help. So the Officer went over to him
and said, with his face turned towards the Traveller,
“The machine is very complicated. Now and then
something has to tear or break. One shouldn’t let that
detract from one’s overall opinion. Anyway, we have
an immediate replacement for the strap. I’ll use a
chain—even though that will affect the sensitivity of
the oscillations for the right arm.” And while he put
the chain in place, he still kept talking, “Our
resources for maintaining the machine are very
limited at the moment. Under the previous
Commandant, I had free access to a cash box
specially set aside exclusively for this purpose. There
was a storeroom here in which all possible
replacement parts were kept. I admit I made almost
extravagant use of it. I mean earlier, not now, as the
New Commandant claims. For him everything serves
only as a pretext to fight against the old
arrangements. Now he keeps the cash box for
machinery under his own control, and if I ask him for
a new strap, he demands the torn one as a piece of
evidence, the new one doesn’t arrive for ten days, and
then it’s an inferior brand, of not much use to me. But
how I am supposed to get the machine to work in the
meantime without a strap—no one’s concerned about
that.”
The Traveller thought about the situation: it is always
questionable to intervene decisively in strange
circumstances. He was neither a citizen of the penal
colony nor a citizen of the state to which it belonged.
If he wanted to condemn this execution or even
hinder it, people could say to him: You are a
foreigner—keep quiet. He would have nothing in
response to that, but could only add that he did not
understand what he was doing on this occasion, for
the purpose of his traveling was merely to observe
and not to alter other people’s judicial systems in any
way. True, at this point the way things were turning
out it was very tempting. The injustice of the process
and the inhumanity of the execution were beyond
doubt. No one could assume that the Traveller was
acting out of any sense of his own self-interest, for
the Condemned Man was a stranger to him, not a
countryman and not someone who invited sympathy
in any way. The Traveller himself had letters of
reference from high officials and had been welcomed
here with great courtesy. The fact that he had been
invited to this execution even seemed to indicate that
people were asking for his judgment of this court.
This was all the more likely since the Commandant,
as he had now had heard only too clearly, was no
supporter of this process and maintained an almost
hostile relationship with the Officer.
Then the Traveller heard a cry of rage from the
Officer. He had just shoved the stub of felt in the
Condemned Man’s mouth, not without difficulty,
when the Condemned Man, overcome by an
irresistible nausea, shut his eyes and threw up. The
Officer quickly yanked him up off the stump and
wanted to turn his head aside toward the pit. But it
was too late. The vomit was already flowing down
onto the machine. “This is all the Commandant’s
fault!” cried the Officer and mindlessly rattled the
brass rods at the front. “My machine’s as filthy as a
pigsty.” With trembling hands he indicated to the
Traveller what had happened. “Haven’t I spent hours
trying to make the Commandant understand that a
day before the execution there should be no more
food served? But the new, lenient administration has
a different opinion. Before the man is led away, the
Commandant’s women cram sugary things down his
throat. His whole life he’s fed himself on stinking
fish, and now he has to eat sweets! But that would be
all right—I’d have no objections—but why don’t
they get a new felt, the way I’ve been asking him for
three months now? How can anyone take this felt into
his mouth without feeling disgusted—something that
more than a hundred men have sucked and bitten on
it as they were dying?”
The Condemned Man had laid his head down and
appeared peaceful. The Soldier was busy cleaning up
the machine with the Condemned Man’s shirt. The
Officer went up to the Traveller, who, feeling some
premonition, took a step backwards. But the Officer
grasped him by the hand and pulled him aside. “I
179
want to speak a few words to you in confidence,” he
said. “May I do that?” “Of course,” said the Traveller
and listened with his eyes lowered.
“This process and this execution, which you now
have an opportunity to admire, have at present no
more open supporters in our colony. I am its single
defender and at the same time the single advocate for
the legacy of the Old Commandant. I can no longer
think about a more extensive organization of the
process—I’m using all my powers to maintain what
there is at present. When the Old Commandant was
alive, the colony was full of his supporters. I have
something of the Old Commandant’s persuasiveness,
but I completely lack his power, and as a result the
supporters have gone into hiding. There are still a lot
of them, but no one admits to it. If you go into a tea
house today—that is to say, on a day of execution—
and keep your ears open, perhaps you’ll hear nothing
but ambiguous remarks. They are all supporters, but
under the present Commandant, considering his
present views, they are totally useless to me. And
now I’m asking you: Should such a life’s work,” he
pointed to the machine, “come to nothing because of
this Commandant and the women influencing him?
Should people let that happen? Even if one is only a
foreigner on our island for a couple of days? But
there is no time to lose. People are already preparing
something against my judicial proceedings.
Discussions are already taking place in the
Commandant’s headquarters, to which I am not
invited. Even your visit today seems to me typical of
the whole situation. People are cowards and send you
out—a foreigner. You should have seen the
executions in earlier days! The entire valley was
overflowing with people, even a day before the
execution. They all came merely to watch. Early in
the morning the Commandant appeared with his
women. Fanfares woke up the entire campsite. I
delivered the news that everything was ready. The
whole society—and every high official had to
attend—arranged itself around the machine. This pile
of cane chairs is a sorry left over from that time. The
machine was freshly cleaned and glowed. For almost
every execution I had new replacement parts. In front
of hundreds of eyes—all the spectators stood on tip
toe right up to the hills there—the condemned man
was laid down under the Harrow by the Commandant
himself. What nowadays has to be done by a
common soldier was then my work as the senior
judge, and it was an honour for me. And then the
execution began! No discordant note disturbed the
work of the machine. Many people did not look any
more at all, but lay down with closed eyes in the
sand. They all knew: now justice was being carried
out. In the silence people heard nothing but the
groans of the condemned man, muffled by the felt.
These days the machine no longer manages to
squeeze out of the condemned man a groan stronger
than the felt is capable of smothering. But back then
the needles which made the inscription dripped a
caustic liquid which today we are not permitted to
use any more. Well, then came the sixth hour! It was
impossible to grant all the requests people made to be
allowed to watch from up close. The Commandant, in
his wisdom, arranged that the children should be
taken care of before all the rest. Naturally, I was
always allowed to stand close by, because of my
official position. Often I crouched down there with
two small children in my arms, on my right and left.
How we all took in the expression of transfiguration
on the martyred face! How we held our cheeks in the
glow of this justice, finally attained and already
passing away! What times we had, my friend!” The
Officer had obviously forgotten who was standing in
front of him. He had put his arm around the Traveller
and laid his head on his shoulder. The Traveller was
extremely embarrassed. Impatiently he looked away
over the Officer’s head. The Soldier had ended his
task of cleaning and had just shaken some rice
pudding into the bowl from a tin. No sooner had the
Condemned Man, who seemed to have fully
recovered already, noticed this than his tongue began
to lick at the pudding. The Soldier kept pushing him
away, for the pudding was probably meant for a later
time, but in any case it was not proper for the Soldier
to reach in and grab some food with his dirty hands
and eat it in front of the famished Condemned Man.
The Officer quickly collected himself. “I didn’t want
to upset you in any way,” he said. “I know it is
impossible to make someone understand those days
now. Besides, the machine still works and operates
on its own. It operates on its own even when it is
standing alone in this valley. And at the end, the body
still keeps falling in that incredibly soft flight into the
pit, even if hundreds of people are not gathered like
flies around the hole the way they used to be. Back
then we had to erect a strong railing around the pit. It
was pulled out long ago.”
The Traveller wanted to turn his face away from the
Officer and looked aimlessly around him. The
Officer thought he was looking at the wasteland of
the valley. So he grabbed his hands, turned him
around in order to catch his gaze, and asked, “Do you
see the shame of it?”
But the Traveller said nothing. The Officer left him
alone for a while. With his legs apart and his hands
on his hips, the Officer stood still and looked at the
180
ground. Then he smiled at the Traveller cheerfully
and said, “Yesterday I was nearby when the
Commandant invited you. I heard the invitation. I
know the Commandant. I understood right away what
he intended with his invitation. Although his power
might be sufficiently great to take action against me,
he doesn’t yet dare to. But my guess is that with you
he is exposing me to the judgment of a respected
foreigner. He calculates things with care. You are
now in your second day on the island. You didn’t
know the Old Commandant and his way of thinking.
You are biased in your European way of seeing
things. Perhaps you are fundamentally opposed to the
death penalty in general and to this kind of
mechanical style of execution in particular.
Moreover, you see how the execution is a sad
procedure, without any public participation, using a
machine which is already somewhat damaged. Now,
if we take all this together (so the Commandant
thinks) surely one could easily imagine that that you
would not consider my procedure appropriate? And if
you didn’t consider it right, you wouldn’t keep quiet
about it—I’m still speaking the mind of the
Commandant—for you no doubt have faith that your
tried-and-true convictions are correct. It’s true that
you have seen many peculiar things among many
peoples and have learned to respect them. Thus, you
will probably not speak out against the procedure
with your full power, as you would perhaps in your
own homeland. But the Commandant doesn’t really
need that. A casual word, merely a careless remark, is
enough. It doesn’t have to match your convictions at
all, so long as it apparently corresponds to his wishes.
I’m certain he will use all his shrewdness to
interrogate you. And his women will sit around in a
circle and perk up their ears. You will say something
like, ‘Among us the judicial procedures are different,’
or ‘With us the accused is questioned before the
verdict,’ or ‘With us the accused hears the judgment’
or ‘With us there are punishments other than the
death penalty’ or ‘With us there was torture only in
the Middle Ages.’ For you all these observations
appear as correct as they are self-evident—innocent
remarks which do not impugn my procedure. But
how will the Commandant take them? I see him, our
excellent Commandant—the way he immediately
pushes his stool aside and hurries out onto the
balcony—I see his women, how they stream after
him. I hear his voice—the women call it a thunder
voice. And now he’s speaking: ‘A great Western
explorer who has been commissioned to inspect
judicial procedures in all countries has just said that
our process based on old customs is inhuman. After
this verdict of such a personality it is, of course, no
longer possible for me to tolerate this procedure. So
from this day on I am ordering . . . and so forth.’ You
want to intervene—you didn’t say what he is
reporting—you didn’t call my procedure inhuman; by
contrast, in keeping with your deep insight, you
consider it the most humane and most worthy of
human beings. You also admire this machinery. But
it is too late. You don’t even go onto the balcony,
which is already filled with women. You want to
attract attention. You want to cry out. But a lady’s
hand is covering your mouth, and I and the Old
Commandant’s work are lost.”
The Traveller had to suppress a smile. So the work
which he had considered so difficult was easy. He
said evasively, “You’re exaggerating my influence.
The Commandant has read my letters of
recommendation. He knows that I am no expert in
judicial processes. If I were to express an opinion, it
would be that of a lay person, no more significant
than the opinion of anyone else, and in any case far
less significant than the opinion of the Commandant,
who, as I understand it, has very extensive powers in
this penal colony. If his views of this procedure are as
definite as you think they are, then I’m afraid the
time has surely come for this procedure to end,
without any need for my humble assistance.”
Did the Officer understand by now? No, he did not
yet grasp it. He shook his head vigorously, briefly
looked back at the Condemned Man and the Soldier,
who both flinched and stopped eating the rice, went
up really close up to the Traveller, without looking
into his face, but gazing at parts of his jacket, and
said more gently than before: “You don’t know the
Commandant. Where he and all of us are concerned
you are—forgive the expression—to a certain extent
innocent. Your influence, believe me, cannot be
overestimated. In fact, I was blissfully happy when I
heard that you were to be present at the execution by
yourself. This arrangement of the Commandant was
aimed at me, but now I’m turning it to my advantage.
Without being distracted by false insinuations and
disparaging looks—which could not have been
avoided with a greater number of participants at the
execution—you have listened to my explanation,
looked at the machine, and are now about to view the
execution. Your verdict is no doubt already fixed. If
some small uncertainties still remain, witnessing the
execution will remove them. And now I’m asking
you—help me against the Commandant!”
The Traveller did not let him go on talking. “How
can I do that?” he cried. “It’s totally impossible. I can
help you as little as I can harm you.”
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“You could do it,” said the Officer. With some
apprehension the Traveller observed that the Officer
was clenching his fists. “You could do it,” repeated
the Officer, even more emphatically. “I have a plan
which must succeed. You think your influence is
insufficient. I know it will be enough. But assuming
you’re right, doesn’t saving this procedure require
one to try everything, even those methods which may
possibly be inadequate? So listen to my plan. To
carry it out, it’s necessary, above all, for you to keep
as quiet as possible today in the colony about your
verdict on this procedure. Unless someone asks you
directly, you should not express any view
whatsoever. But what you do say must be short and
vague. People should notice that it has become
difficult for you to speak about the subject, that you
feel bitter, that, if you were to speak openly, you’d
have to burst out cursing on the spot. I’m not asking
you to lie, not at all. You should give only brief
answers—something like, ‘Yes, I’ve seen the
execution’ or ‘Yes, I’ve heard the full explanation.’
That’s all—nothing further. For that will be enough
of an indication for people to observe in you a certain
bitterness, even if that’s not what the Commandant
will think. Naturally, he will completely
misunderstand the issue and interpret it in his own
way. My plan is based on that. Tomorrow a large
meeting of all the higher administrative officials
takes place at headquarters under the chairmanship of
the Commandant. He, of course, understands how to
turn such meetings into a spectacle. A gallery has
been built, which is always full of spectators. I’m
compelled to take part in the discussions, though they
make me shiver with disgust. In any case, you will
certainly be invited to the meeting. If you follow my
plan today and behave accordingly, the invitation will
become an emphatic request. But should you for
some inexplicable reason still not be invited, you
must make sure you request an invitation. Then
you’ll receive one without question. Now, tomorrow
you are sitting with the women in the Commandant’s
box. With frequent upward glances he reassures
himself that you are there. After various trivial and
ridiculous agenda items designed only for the
spectators—mostly harbour construction, always
harbour construction!—the judicial process also
comes up for discussion. If it’s not raised by the
Commandant himself or does not occur soon enough,
I’ll make sure that it comes up. I’ll stand up and
report the news of today’s execution. Really
briefly—just this announcement. True, such a report
is not customary there; however, I’ll do it,
nonetheless. The Commandant thanks me, as always,
with a friendly smile. And now he cannot restrain
himself. He seizes this excellent opportunity. ‘The
report of the execution,’ he’ll say, or something like
that, ‘has just been given. I would like to add to this
report only the fact that this particular execution was
attended by the great explorer whose visit confers
such extraordinary honour on our colony, as you all
know. Even the significance of our meeting today has
been increased by his presence. Do we not now wish
to ask this great explorer for his appraisal of the
execution based on old customs and of the process
which preceded it?’ Of course, there is the noise of
applause everywhere, universal agreement. And I’m
louder than anyone. The Commandant bows before
you and says, ‘Then in everyone’s name, I’m putting
the question to you.’ And now you step up to the
railing. Place your hands where everyone can see
them. Otherwise the ladies will grab them and play
with your fingers. And now finally come your
remarks. I don’t know how I’ll bear the tense
moments up to that point. In your speech you mustn’t
hold back. Let truth resound. Lean over the railing
and shout it out—yes, yes, roar your opinion at the
Commandant, your unshakeable opinion. But perhaps
you don’t want to do that. It doesn’t suit your
character. Perhaps in your homeland people behave
differently in such situations. That’s all right. That’s
perfectly satisfactory. Don’t stand up at all. Just say a
couple of words. Whisper them so that only the
officials underneath you can hear them. That’s
enough. You don’t even have to say anything at all
about the lack of attendance at the execution or about
the squeaky wheel, the torn strap, the disgusting felt.
No. I’ll take over all further details, and, believe me,
if my speech doesn’t chase him out of the room, it
will force him to his knees, so he’ll have to admit it:
‘Old Commandant, I bow down before you.’ That’s
my plan. Do you want to help me carry it out? But, of
course, you want to. More than that—you have to.”
And the Officer gripped the Traveller by both arms
and looked at him, breathing heavily into his face. He
had yelled the last sentences so loudly that even the
Soldier and the Condemned Man were paying
attention. Although they couldn’t understand a thing,
they stopped eating and looked over at the Traveller,
still chewing.
From the very start the Traveller had had no doubts
about the answer he must give. He had experienced
too much in his life to be able to waver here.
Basically he was honest and unafraid. Still, with the
Soldier and the Condemned Man looking at him, he
hesitated a moment. But finally he said, as he had to,
“No.” The Officer’s eyes blinked several times, but
he did not take his eyes off the Traveller. “Would you
like an explanation,” asked the Traveller. The Officer
nodded dumbly. “I am opposed to this procedure,”
said the Traveller. “Even before you took me into
your confidence—and, of course, I will never abuse
182
your confidence under any circumstances—I was
already thinking about whether I was entitled to
intervene against this procedure and whether my
intervention could have even a small chance of
success. And if that was the case, it was clear to me
whom I had to turn to first of all—naturally, to the
Commandant. You have clarified the issue for me
even more, but without reinforcing my decision in
any way—quite the reverse. I find your conviction
genuinely moving, even if it cannot deter me.”
The Officer remained silent, turned towards the
machine, grabbed one of the brass rods, and then,
leaning back a little, looked up at the Inscriber, as if
he was checking that everything was in order. The
Soldier and the Condemned Man seemed to have
made friends with each other. The Condemned Man
was making signs to the Soldier, although, given the
tight straps on him, this was difficult for him to do.
The Soldier was leaning into him. The Condemned
Man whispered something to him, and the Soldier
nodded.
The Traveller went over to the Officer and said, “You
don’t yet know what I’ll do. Yes, I will tell the
Commandant my opinion of the procedure—not in a
meeting, but in private. In addition, I won’t stay here
long enough to be able to get called in to some
meeting or other. Early tomorrow morning I leave, or
at least I go on board ship.”
It did not look as if the Officer had been listening.
“So the process has not convinced you,” he said to
himself and smiled the way an old man smiles over
the silliness of a child, concealing his own true
thoughts behind that smile.
“Well then, it’s time,” he said finally and suddenly
looked at the Traveller with bright eyes which
contained some sort of demand, some appeal for
participation. “Time for what?” asked the Traveller
uneasily. But there was no answer.
“You are free,” the Officer told the Condemned Man
in his own language. At first the man did not believe
him. “You are free now,” said the Officer. For the
first time the face of the Condemned Man showed
signs of real life. Was it the truth? Was it only the
Officer’s mood, which could change? Had the
foreign Traveller brought him a reprieve? What was
it? That is what the man’s face seemed to be asking.
But not for long. Whatever the case might be, if he
could he wanted to be truly free, and he began to
shake back and forth, as much as the Harrow
permitted.
“You’re tearing my straps,” cried the Officer. “Be
still! We’ll undo them right away.” And, giving a
signal to the Soldier, he set to work with him. The
Condemned Man said nothing and smiled slightly to
himself. At times he turned his face to the Officer on
the left and at times to the Soldier on the right,
without ignoring the Traveller.
“Pull him out,” the Officer ordered the Soldier. This
process required a certain amount of care because of
the Harrow. The Condemned Man already had a few
small wounds on his back, thanks to his own
impatience.
From this point on, however, the Officer paid no
more attention to him. He went up to the Traveller,
pulled out the small leather folder once more, leafed
through it, finally found the sheet he was looking for,
and showed it to the Traveller. “Read that,” he said.
“I can’t,” said the Traveller. “I’ve already told you I
can’t read these pages.” “But take a close look at the
page,” said the Officer and moved up right next to the
Traveller in order to read with him. When that didn’t
help, he raised his little finger high up over the paper,
as if the page must not be touched under any
circumstances, so that using this he might make the
task of reading easier for the Traveller. The Traveller
also made an effort so that at least he could satisfy
the Officer, but it was impossible for him. At that
point the Officer began to spell out the inscription,
and then he read out once again the joined up letters.
“‘Be just!’ it states,” he said. “Now you can read it.”
The Traveller bent so low over the paper that the
Officer, afraid that he might touch it, moved it further
away. The Traveller didn’t say anything more, but it
was clear that he was still unable to read anything.
“‘Be just!’ it says,” the Officer remarked once again.
“That could be,” said the Traveller. “I do believe
that’s written there.” “Good,” said the Officer, at
least partially satisfied. He climbed up the ladder,
holding the paper. With great care he set the page in
the Inscriber and appeared to rotate the gear
mechanism completely around. This was very tiring
work. It must have required him to deal with
extremely small wheels. He had to inspect the gears
so closely that sometimes the Officer’s head
disappeared completely into the Inscriber.
The Traveller followed this work from below without
looking away. His neck grew stiff, and his eyes found
the sunlight pouring down from the sky painful. The
Soldier and the Condemned Man were keeping each
other busy. With the tip of his bayonet the Soldier
pulled out the Condemned Man’s shirt and trousers
which were lying in the hole. The shirt was horribly
183
dirty, and the Condemned Man washed it in the
bucket of water. When he was putting on his shirt and
trousers, the Soldier and the Condemned Man had to
laugh out loud, for the pieces of clothing were cut in
two up the back. Perhaps the Condemned Man
thought that it was his duty to amuse the Soldier. In
his ripped-up clothes he circled in front of the
Soldier, who crouched down on the ground, laughed,
and slapped his knees. But they still restrained
themselves out of consideration for the two
gentlemen present.
When the Officer was finally finished up on the
machine, with a smile he looked over the whole thing
and all its parts once more, and this time closed the
cover of the Inscriber, which had been open up to this
point. He climbed down, looked into the hole and
then at the Condemned Man, observed with
satisfaction that his clothes had been hauled out, then
went to the bucket of water to wash his hands,
recognized too late that it was disgustingly dirty, and
was upset that now he could not wash his hands.
Finally he pushed them into the sand. This option did
not satisfy him, but he had to do what he could in the
circumstances. Then he stood up and began to
unbutton the coat of his uniform. As he did this, the
two lady’s handkerchiefs, which he had pushed into
the back of his collar, fell into his hands. “Here you
have your handkerchiefs,” he said and threw them
over to the Condemned Man. And to the Traveller he
said by way of an explanation, “Presents from the
ladies.”
In spite of the obvious speed with which he took off
the coat of his uniform and then undressed himself
completely, he handled each piece of clothing very
carefully, even running his fingers over the silver
braids on his tunic with special care and shaking a
tassel into place. But in great contrast to this care, as
soon he was finished handling an article of clothing,
he immediately flung it angrily into the hole. The last
items he had left were his short sword and its harness.
He pulled the sword out of its scabbard, broke it in
pieces, then gathered up everything—the pieces of
the sword, the scabbard, and the harness—and threw
them away so forcefully that they rattled against each
other down in the pit.
Now he stood there naked. The Traveller bit his lip
and said nothing. For he was aware what would
happen, but he had no right to hinder the Officer in
any way. If the judicial process to which the Officer
clung was really so close to the point of being
cancelled—possibly as a result of the intervention of
the Traveller, something to which he for his part felt
duty-bound—then the Officer was now acting in a
completely correct manner. In his place, the Traveller
would not have acted any differently.
The Soldier and the Condemned Man at first did not
understand a thing. To begin with they did not look,
not even once. The Condemned Man was extremely
happy to get the handkerchiefs back, but he was not
permitted to enjoy them very long, because the
Soldier snatched them from him with a quick grab,
which he had not anticipated. The Condemned Man
then tried to pull the handkerchiefs out from the
Soldier’s belt, where he had put them for safe
keeping, but the Soldier was watching carefully. So
they were fighting, half in jest. Only when the Officer
was fully naked did they start to pay attention. The
Condemned Man especially seemed to be struck by a
premonition of some sort of significant
transformation. What had happened to him was now
taking place with the Officer. Perhaps this time the
procedure would play itself out to its conclusion. The
foreign Traveller had probably given the order for it.
So that was revenge. Without having suffered all the
way to the end himself, nonetheless he would be
completely avenged. A wide, silent laugh now
appeared on his face and never went away.
The Officer, however, had turned towards the
machine. If earlier on it had already become clear that
he understood the machine thoroughly, one could
well get alarmed now at the way he handled it and
how it obeyed. He only had to bring his hand near the
Harrow for it to rise and sink several times, until it
had reached the correct position to make room for
him. He only had to grasp the Bed by the edges, and
it already began to quiver. The stump of felt moved
up to his mouth. One could see how the Officer really
did not want to accept it, but his hesitation was only
momentary—he immediately submitted and took it
in. Everything was ready, except that the straps still
hung down on the sides. But they were clearly
unnecessary. The Officer did not have to be strapped
down. When the Condemned Man saw the loose
straps, he thought the execution would be incomplete
unless they were fastened. He waved eagerly to the
Soldier, and they ran over to strap in the Officer. The
latter had already stuck out his foot to kick the crank
designed to set the Inscriber in motion. Then he saw
the two men coming. So he pulled his foot back and
let himself be strapped in. But now he could no
longer reach the crank. Neither the Soldier nor the
Condemned Man would find it, and the Traveller was
determined not to touch it. But that was unnecessary.
Hardly were the straps attached when the machine
already started working: the Bed quivered, the
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needles danced on his skin, and the Harrow swung up
and down. The Traveller had already been staring for
some time before he remembered that a wheel in the
Inscriber was supposed to squeak. But everything
was quiet, without the slightest audible hum.
Because of its silent working, the machine did not
really attract attention. The Traveller looked over at
the Soldier and the Condemned Man. The
Condemned Man was the livelier of the two.
Everything in the machine interested him. At times
he bent down; at other times he stretched up, always
pointing with his forefinger in order to show
something to the Soldier. For the Traveller it was
embarrassing. He was determined to remain here
until the end, but he could no longer endure the sight
of the two men. “Go home,” he said. The Soldier
might perhaps have been ready to do that, but the
Condemned Man took the order as a direct
punishment. With his hands folded he pleaded to be
allowed to stay there. And when the Traveller shook
his head and was unwilling to give in, he even knelt
down. Seeing that orders were of no help here, the
Traveller wanted to go over and chase the two away.
Then he heard a noise from up in the Inscriber. He
looked up. So was the gear wheel going out of
alignment? But it was something else. The lid on the
Inscriber was lifting up slowly. Then it fell
completely open. The teeth of a cog wheel were
exposed and lifted up. Soon the entire wheel
appeared. It was as if some huge force was
compressing the Inscriber, so that there was no longer
sufficient room left for this wheel. The wheel rolled
all the way to the edge of the Inscriber, fell down,
rolled upright a bit in the sand, and then fell over and
lay still. But already up on the Inscriber another gear
wheel was moving upwards. Several others
followed—large ones, small ones, ones hard to
distinguish. With each of them the same thing
happened. One kept thinking that now the Inscriber
must surely be already empty, but then a new cluster
with lots of parts would move up, fall down, roll in
the sand, and lie still. With all this going on, the
Condemned Man totally forgot the Traveller’s order.
The gear wheels completely delighted him. He kept
wanting to grab one, and at the same time he was
urging the Soldier to help him. But he kept pulling
his hand back startled, for immediately another wheel
followed, which, at least in its initial rolling,
surprised him.
The Traveller, by contrast, was very upset. Obviously
the machine was breaking up. Its quiet operation had
been an illusion. He felt as if he had to look after the
Officer, now that the latter could no longer look after
himself. But while the falling gear wheels were
claiming all his attention, he had neglected to look at
the rest of the machine. However, when he now bent
over the Harrow, once the last gear wheel had left the
Inscriber, he had a new, even more unpleasant
surprise. The Harrow was not writing but only
stabbing, and the Bed was not rolling the body, but
lifting it, quivering, up into the needles. The Traveller
wanted to reach in to stop the whole thing, if
possible. This was not the torture the Officer wished
to attain; it was murder, pure and simple. He
stretched out his hands. But at that point the Harrow
was already moving upwards and to the side, with the
skewered body—just as it did in other cases, but only
in the twelfth hour. Blood flowed out in hundreds of
streams, not mixed with water—the water tubes had
failed to work this time, as well. Then one last thing
went wrong: the body would not come loose from the
long needles. Its blood streamed out, but it hung over
the pit without falling. The Harrow wanted to move
back to its original position, but, as if realizing that it
could not free itself of its load, it remained over the
hole. “Help,” the Traveller yelled out to the Soldier
and the Condemned Man, and he himself grabbed the
Officer’s feet. He wanted to push against the feet
himself and have the two others grab the Officer’s
head from the other side, so he could be slowly lifted
off the needles. But now the two men could not make
up their mind whether to come or not. The
Condemned Man turned away at once. The Traveller
had to go over to him and drag him to the Officer’s
head by force. At this point, almost against his will,
he looked at the face of the corpse. It was as it had
been in life. He could discover no sign of the
promised transfiguration. What all the others had
found in the machine, the Officer had not. His lips
were pressed firmly together, his eyes were open and
looked as they had when he was alive, his gaze was
calm and convinced. The tip of a large iron needle
had gone through his forehead.
*
*
*
As the Traveller, with the Soldier and the
Condemned Man behind him, came to the first
houses in the colony, the Soldier pointed to one and
said, “That’s the tea house.”
On the ground floor of the house was a deep, low
room, like a cave, with smoke-covered walls and
ceiling. On the street side it was open along its full
width. Although there was little difference between
the tea house and the rest of the houses in the colony,
which were all very dilapidated, except for the
Commandant’s palatial structure, the Traveller was
185
nonetheless struck by the impression of historical
memory, and he felt the power of earlier times.
Followed by his companions, he walked closer
inside, going between the unoccupied tables, which
stood in the street in front of the tea house, and took a
breath of the cool, musty air which came from inside.
“The old man is buried here,” said the Soldier; “a
place in the cemetery was denied him by the
chaplain. For a while people were undecided where
they should bury him. Finally they buried him here.
Of course, the Officer explained none of that to you,
for naturally he was the one most ashamed about it. A
few times he even tried to dig up the old man at
night, but he was always chased off.” “Where is the
grave?” asked the Traveller, who could not believe
the Soldier. Instantly both men, the Soldier and the
Condemned Man, ran in front of him and with hands
outstretched pointed to the place where the grave was
located. They led the Traveller to the back wall,
where guests were sitting at a few tables. They were
presumably dock workers, strong men with short,
shiny, black beards. None of them wore coats, and
their shirts were torn. They were poor, humiliated
people. As the Traveller came closer, a few got up,
leaned against the wall, and looked at him. A whisper
went up around the Traveller—“It’s a foreigner. He
wants to look at the grave.” They pushed one of the
tables aside, under which there was a real grave
stone. It was a simple stone, low enough for it to
remain hidden under a table. It bore an inscription in
very small letters. In order to read it the Traveller had
to kneel down. It read, “Here rests the Old
Commandant. His followers, who are now not
permitted to have a name, buried him in this grave
and erected this stone. There exists a prophecy that
the Commandant will rise again after a certain
number of years and from this house will lead his
followers to a re-conquest of the colony. Have faith
and wait!” When the Traveller had read it and got up,
he saw the men standing around him and smiling, as
if they had read the inscription with him, found it
ridiculous, and were asking him to share their
opinion. The Traveller acted as if he had not noticed,
distributed some coins among them, waited until the
table was pushed back over the grave, left the tea
house, and went to the harbour.
In the tea house the Soldier and the Condemned Man
had come across some people they knew who
detained them. However, they must have broken free
of them soon, because by the time the Traveller
found himself in the middle of a long staircase which
led to the boats, they were already running after him.
They probably wanted to force the Traveller at the
last minute to take them with him. While the
Traveller was haggling at the bottom of the stairs
with a sailor about his passage out to the steamer, the
two men were racing down the steps in silence, for
they did not dare cry out. But as they reached the
bottom, the Traveller was already in the boat, and the
sailor at once cast off from shore. They could still
have jumped into the boat, but the Traveller picked
up a heavy knotted rope from the boat bottom,
threatened them with it, and thus prevented them
from jumping in.
A Hunger Artist
Frank Kafka
In the last decades interest in hunger artists has
declined considerably. Whereas in earlier days there
was good money to be earned putting on major
productions of this sort under one’s own
management, nowadays that is totally impossible.
Those were different times. Back then the hunger
artist captured the attention of the entire city. From
day to day while the fasting lasted, participation
increased. Everyone wanted to see the hunger artist at
least once a day. During the later days there were
people with subscription tickets who sat all day in
front of the small barred cage. And there were even
viewing hours at night, their impact heightened by
torchlight. On fine days the cage was dragged out
into the open air, and then the hunger artist was put
on display particularly for the children. While for
grown-ups the hunger artist was often merely a joke,
something they participated in because it was
fashionable, the children looked on amazed, their
mouths open, holding each other’s hands for safety,
as he sat there on scattered straw—spurning a chair—
in black tights, looking pale, with his ribs sticking out
prominently, sometimes nodding politely, answering
questions with a forced smile, even sticking his arm
out through the bars to let people feel how emaciated
he was, but then completely sinking back into
himself, so that he paid no attention to anything, not
even to what was so important to him, the striking of
the clock, which was the single furnishing in the
cage, but merely looking out in front of him with his
eyes almost shut and now and then sipping from a
tiny glass of water to moisten his lips.
Apart from the changing groups of spectators there
were also constant observers chosen by the public—
strangely enough they were usually butchers—who,
always three at a time, were given the task of
observing the hunger artist day and night, so that he
didn’t get anything to eat in some secret manner. It
was, however, merely a formality, introduced to
reassure the masses, for those who understood knew
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well enough that during the period of fasting the
hunger artist would never, under any circumstances,
have eaten the slightest thing, not even if compelled
by force. The honour of his art forbade it. Naturally,
none of the watchers understood that. Sometimes
there were nightly groups of watchers who carried
out their vigil very laxly, deliberately sitting together
in a distant corner and putting all their attention into
playing cards there, clearly intending to allow the
hunger artist a small refreshment, which, according to
their way of thinking, he could get from some secret
supplies. Nothing was more excruciating to the
hunger artist than such watchers. They depressed
him. They made his fasting terribly difficult.
Sometimes he overcame his weakness and sang
during the time they were observing, for as long as he
could keep it up, to show people how unjust their
suspicions about him were. But that was little help.
For then they just wondered among themselves about
his skill at being able to eat even while singing. He
much preferred the observers who sat down right
against the bars and, not satisfied with the dim
backlighting of the room, illuminated him with
electric flashlights, which the impresario made
available to them. The glaring light didn’t bother him
in the slightest. Generally he couldn’t sleep at all, and
he could always doze off a little under any lighting
and at any hour, even in an overcrowded, noisy
auditorium. With such observers, he was very happily
prepared to spend the entire night without sleeping.
He was ready to joke with them, to recount stories
from his nomadic life and then, in turn, to listen to
their stories—doing everything just to keep them
awake, so that he could keep showing them once
again that he had nothing to eat in his cage and that
he was fasting as none of them could. He was
happiest, however, when morning came and a lavish
breakfast was brought for them at his own expense,
on which they hurled themselves with the appetite of
healthy men after a hard night’s work without sleep.
True, there were still people who wanted to see in
this breakfast an unfair means of influencing the
observers, but that was going too far, and if they were
asked whether they wanted to undertake the
observers’ night shift for its own sake, without the
breakfast, they excused themselves. But nonetheless
they stood by their suspicions.
However, it was, in general, part of fasting that these
doubts were inextricably associated with it. For, in
fact, no one was in a position to spend time watching
the hunger artist every day and night without
interruption, so no one could know, on the basis of
his own observation, whether this was a case of truly
continuous, flawless fasting. The hunger artist
himself was the only one who could know that and, at
the same time, the only spectator capable of being
completely satisfied with his own fasting. But the
reason he was never satisfied was something
different. Perhaps it was not fasting at all which made
him so very emaciated that many people, to their own
regret, had to stay away from his performance,
because they couldn’t bear to look at him. For he was
also so skeletal out of dissatisfaction with himself,
because he alone knew something that even initiates
didn’t know—how easy it was to fast. It was the
easiest thing in the world. About this he did not
remain silent, but people did not believe him. At best
they thought he was being modest. Most of them,
however, believed he was a publicity seeker or a total
swindler, for whom, at all events, fasting was easy,
because he understood how to make it easy, and then
still had the nerve to half admit it. He had to accept
all that. Over the years he had become accustomed to
it. But this dissatisfaction kept gnawing at his insides
all the time and never yet—and this one had to say to
his credit—had he left the cage of his own free will
after any period of fasting. The impresario had set the
maximum length of time for the fast at forty days—
he would never allow the fasting go on beyond that
point, not even in the cosmopolitan cities. And, in
fact, he had a good reason. Experience had shown
that for about forty days one could increasingly whip
up a city’s interest by gradually increasing
advertising, but that then the public turned away—
one could demonstrate a significant decline in
popularity. In this respect, there were, of course,
small differences among different towns and among
different countries, but as a rule it was true that forty
days was the maximum length of time. So then on the
fortieth day the door of the cage—which was covered
with flowers—was opened, an enthusiastic audience
filled the amphitheatre, a military band played, two
doctors entered the cage, in order to take the
necessary measurements of the hunger artist, the
results were announced to the auditorium through a
megaphone, and finally two young ladies arrived,
happy about the fact that they were the ones who had
just been selected by lot, and sought to lead the
hunger artist down a couple of steps out of the cage,
where on a small table a carefully chosen hospital
meal was laid out. And at this moment the hunger
artist always fought back. Of course, he still freely
laid his bony arms in the helpful outstretched hands
of the ladies bending over him, but he did not want to
stand up. Why stop right now after forty days? He
could have kept going for even longer, for an
unlimited length of time. Why stop right now, when
he was in his best form, indeed, not yet even in his
best fasting form? Why did people want to rob him of
the fame of fasting longer, not just so that he could
become the greatest hunger artist of all time, which,
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in fact, he probably was already, but also so that he
could surpass himself in some unimaginable way, for
he felt there were no limits to his capacity for fasting.
Why did this crowd, which pretended to admire him
so much, have so little patience with him? If he kept
going and kept fasting even longer, why would they
not tolerate it? Then, too, he was tired and felt good
sitting in the straw. Now he was supposed to stand up
straight and tall and go to eat, something which,
when he merely imagined it, made him feel nauseous
right away. With great difficulty he repressed
mentioning this only out of consideration for the
women. And he looked up into the eyes of these
women, apparently so friendly but in reality so cruel,
and shook his excessively heavy head on his feeble
neck. But then happened what always happened. The
impresario came forward without a word—the music
made talking impossible—raised his arms over the
hunger artist, as if inviting heaven to look upon its
work here on the straw, this unfortunate martyr,
something the hunger artist certainly was, only in a
completely different sense, grabbed the hunger artist
around his thin waist, in the process wanting with his
exaggerated caution to make people believe that here
he had to deal with something fragile, and handed
him over—not without secretly shaking him a little,
so that the hunger artist’s legs and upper body swung
back and forth uncontrollably—to the women, who
had in the meantime turned as pale as death. At this
point, the hunger artist endured everything. His head
lay on his chest—it was as if it had inexplicably
rolled around and just stopped there—his body was
arched back, his legs, in an impulse of selfpreservation, pressed themselves together at the
knees, but scraped the ground, as if they were not
really on the floor but were looking for the real
ground, and the entire weight of his body, admittedly
very small, lay against one of the women, who
appealed for help with flustered breath, for she had
not imagined her post of honour would be like this,
and then stretched her neck as far as possible, to keep
her face from the least contact with the hunger artist,
but then, when she couldn’t manage this and her
more fortunate companion didn’t come to her
assistance but trembled and remained content to hold
in front of her the hunger artist’s hand, that small
bundle of knuckles, she broke into tears, to the
delighted laughter of the auditorium, and had to be
relieved by an attendant who had been standing ready
for some time. Then came the meal. The impresario
put a little food into the mouth of the hunger artist,
now dozing as if he were fainting, and kept up a
cheerful patter designed to divert attention away from
the hunger artist’s condition. Then a toast was
proposed to the public, which was supposedly
whispered to the impresario by the hunger artist, the
orchestra confirmed everything with a great fanfare,
people dispersed, and no one had the right to be
dissatisfied with the event, no one except the hunger
artist—he was always the only one.
He lived this way, taking small regular breaks, for
many years, apparently in the spotlight, honoured by
the world, but for all that, his mood was usually
gloomy, and it kept growing gloomier all the time,
because no one understood how to take it seriously.
But how was he to find consolation? What was there
left for him to wish for? And if a good-natured man
who felt sorry for him ever wanted to explain to him
that his sadness probably came from his fasting, then
it could happen, especially at an advanced stage of
the fasting, that the hunger artist responded with an
outburst of rage and began to shake the cage like an
animal, frightening everyone. But the impresario had
a way of punishing moments like this, something he
was happy to use. He would make an apology for the
hunger artist to the assembled public, conceding that
the irritability had been provoked only by his fasting,
which well-fed people did not readily understand and
which was capable of excusing the behaviour of the
hunger artist. From there he would move on to speak
about the equally hard to understand claim of the
hunger artist that he could go on fasting for much
longer than he was doing. He would praise the lofty
striving, the good will, and the great self-denial no
doubt contained in this claim, but then would try to
contradict it simply by producing photographs, which
were also on sale, for in the pictures one could see
the hunger artist on the fortieth day of his fast, in bed,
almost dead from exhaustion. Although the hunger
artist was very familiar with this perversion of the
truth, it always strained his nerves again and was too
much for him. What was a result of the premature
ending of the fast people were now proposing as its
cause! It was impossible to fight against this lack of
understanding, against this world of
misunderstanding. In good faith he always still
listened eagerly to the impresario at the bars of his
cage, but each time, once the photographs came out,
he would let go of the bars and, with a sigh, sink back
into the straw, and a reassured public could come up
again and view him.
When those who had witnessed such scenes thought
back on them a few years later, often they were
unable to understand themselves. For in the
meantime that change mentioned above had set it. It
happened almost immediately. There may have been
more profound reasons for it, but who bothered to
discover what they were? At any rate, one day the
pampered hunger artist saw himself abandoned by the
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crowd of pleasure seekers, who preferred to stream to
other attractions. The impresario chased around half
of Europe one more time with him, to see whether he
could still re-discover the old interest here and there.
It was all futile. It was as if a secret agreement
against the fasting performances had really developed
everywhere. Naturally, the truth is that it could not
have happened so quickly, and people later
remembered some things which in the days of
intoxicating success they had not paid sufficient
attention to, some inadequately suppressed
indications, but now it was too late to do anything to
counter them. Of course, it was certain that the
popularity of fasting would return once more
someday, but for those now alive that was no
consolation. What was the hunger artist to do now?
The man whom thousands of people had cheered on
could not display himself in show booths at small fun
fairs, and the hunger artist was not only too old to
take up a different profession, but was fanatically
devoted to fasting more than anything else. So he
said farewell to the impresario, an incomparable
companion on his life’s road, and let himself be hired
by a large circus. In order to spare his own feelings,
he didn’t even look at the terms of his contract at all.
A large circus with its huge number of men, animals,
and gimmicks, which are constantly being let go and
replenished, can use anyone at any time, even a
hunger artist, provided, of course, his demands are
modest. Moreover, in this particular case it was not
only the hunger artist himself who was engaged, but
also his old and famous name. In fact, given the
characteristic nature of his art, which was not
diminished by his advancing age, one could never
claim that a worn-out artist, who no longer stood at
the pinnacle of his ability, wanted to escape to a quiet
position in the circus. On the contrary, the hunger
artist declared that he could fast just as well as in
earlier times—something that was entirely credible.
Indeed, he even affirmed that if people would let him
do what he wanted—and he was promised this
without further ado—he would really now
legitimately amaze the world for the first time, an
assertion which, however, given the mood of the
time, something the hunger artist in his enthusiasm
easily overlooked, only brought smiles from the
experts.
However, basically the hunger artist had also not
forgotten his sense of the way things really were, and
he took it as self-evident that people would not set
him and his cage up as some star attraction in the
middle of the arena, but would move him outside in
some other readily accessible spot near the animal
stalls. Huge brightly painted signs surrounded the
cage and announced what there was to look at there.
During the intervals in the main performance, when
the general public pushed out towards the menagerie
in order to see the animals, they could hardly avoid
moving past the hunger artist and stopping there a
moment. They would perhaps have remained with
him longer, if those pushing up behind them in the
narrow passageway, who did not understand this
pause on the way to the animal stalls they wanted to
see, had not made a longer peaceful observation
impossible. This was also the reason why the hunger
artist began to tremble before these visiting hours,
which he naturally used to long for as the main
purpose of his life. In the early days he could hardly
wait for the pauses in the performances. He had
looked forward with delight to the crowd pouring
around him, until he became convinced only too
quickly—and even the most stubborn, almost
deliberate self-deception could not hold out against
the experience—that, judging by their intentions,
most of these people were, time and again without
exception, only visiting the menagerie. And this view
from a distance still remained his most beautiful
moment. For when they had come right up to him, he
immediately got an earful from the shouting and
cursing of the two steadily increasing groups, the
ones who wanted to take their time looking at the
hunger artist, not with any understanding but on a
whim or from mere defiance—for him these ones
were soon the more painful—and a second group of
people whose only demand was to go straight to the
animal stalls. Once the large crowds had passed, the
late-comers would arrive, and although there was
nothing preventing these people any more from
sticking around for as long as they wanted, they
rushed past with long strides, almost without a
sideways glance, to get to the animals in time. And it
was an all-too-rare stroke of luck when the father of a
family came by with his children, pointed his finger
at the hunger artist, gave a detailed explanation about
what was going on here, and talked of earlier years,
when he had been present at similar but
incomparably more magnificent performances, and
then the children, because they had been inadequately
prepared at school and in life, always stood around
still uncomprehendingly. What was fasting to them?
But nonetheless the brightness of the look in their
searching eyes revealed something of new and more
gracious times coming. Perhaps, the hunger artist said
to himself sometimes, everything would be a little
better if his location were not quite so near the animal
stalls. That way it would be easy for people to make
their choice, to say nothing of the fact that he was
very upset and constantly depressed by the stink from
the stalls, the animals’ commotion at night, the pieces
189
of raw meat dragged past him for the carnivorous
beasts, and the roars at feeding time. But he did not
dare to approach the administration about it. In any
case, he had the animals to thank for the crowds of
visitors among whom, now and then, there could also
be one destined for him. And who knew where they
would hide him if he wished to remind them of his
existence and, along with that, of the fact that, strictly
speaking, he was only an obstacle on the way to the
menagerie.
A small obstacle, at any rate, a constantly
diminishing obstacle. People became accustomed to
thinking it strange that in these times they would
want to pay attention to a hunger artist, and with this
habitual awareness the judgment on him was
pronounced. He might fast as well as he could—and
he did—but nothing could save him any more. People
went straight past him. Try to explain the art of
fasting to anyone! If someone doesn’t feel it, then he
cannot be made to understand it. The beautiful signs
became dirty and illegible. People tore them down,
and no one thought of replacing them. The small
table with the number of days the fasting had lasted,
which early on had been carefully renewed every
day, remained unchanged for a long time, for after
the first weeks the staff grew tired of even this small
task. And so the hunger artist kept fasting on and on,
as he once had dreamed about in earlier times, and he
had no difficulty at all managing to achieve what he
had predicted back then, but no one was counting the
days—no one, not even the hunger artist himself,
knew how great his achievement was by this point,
and his heart grew heavy. And when once in a while
a person strolling past stood there making fun of the
old number and talking of a swindle, that was in a
sense the stupidest lie which indifference and innate
maliciousness could invent, for the hunger artist was
not being deceptive—he was working honestly—but
the world was cheating him of his reward.
order to indicate to the staff the state the hunger artist
was in, “we forgive you.” “I always wanted you to
admire my fasting,” said the hunger artist. “But we
do admire it,” said the supervisor obligingly. “But
you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist. “Well
then, we don’t admire it,” said the supervisor, “but
why shouldn’t we admire it?” “Because I had to fast.
I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist. “Just
look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do
anything else?” “Because,” said the hunger artist,
lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as if
for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so
that he wouldn’t miss anything, “because I couldn’t
find a food which tasted good to me. If had found
that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle
of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s
content, like you and everyone else.” Those were his
last words, but in his failing eyes there was still the
firm, if no longer proud, conviction that he was
continuing to fast.
“All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And
they buried the hunger artist along with the straw.
But in his cage they put a young panther. Even for a
person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing
to see this wild animal prowling around in this cage,
which had been dreary for such a long time. It lacked
nothing. Without thinking about it for any length of
time, the guards brought the animal food whose taste
it enjoyed. It never seemed once to miss its freedom.
This noble body, equipped with everything
necessary, almost to the point of bursting, even
appeared to carry freedom around with it. That seem
to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its
joy in living came with such strong passion from its
throat that it was not easy for spectators to keep
watching. But they controlled themselves, kept
pressing around the cage, and had no desire at all to
move on.
___________________________________________
Many days went by once more, and this, too, came to
an end. Finally the cage caught the attention of a
supervisor, and he asked the attendant why they had
left this perfectly useful cage standing here unused
with rotting straw inside. Nobody knew, until one
man, with the help of the table with the number on it,
remembered the hunger artist. They pushed the straw
around with poles and found the hunger artist in
there. “Are you still fasting?” the supervisor asked.
“When are you finally going to stop?” “Forgive me
everything,” whispered the hunger artist. Only the
supervisor, who was pressing his ear up against the
cage, understood him. “Certainly,” said the
supervisor, tapping his forehead with his finger in
Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from
anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had
been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He
lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his
head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided
up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the
blanket, just about ready to slide off completely,
could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs,
pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his
circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
190
“What’s happened to me,” he thought. It was no
dream. His room, a proper room for a human being,
only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the
four well-known walls. Above the table, on which an
unpacked collection of sample cloth goods was
spread out—Samsa was a travelling salesman—hung
the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated
magazine a little while ago and set in a pretty gilt
frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and
a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the
direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which
her entire forearm had disappeared.
Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The
dreary weather—the rain drops were falling audibly
down on the metal window ledge—made him quite
melancholy. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little
while longer and forget all this foolishness,” he
thought. But this was entirely impractical, for he was
used to sleeping on his right side, but in his present
state he could not get himself into this position. No
matter how hard he threw himself onto his right side,
he always rolled onto his back again. He must have
tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so that he
would not have to see the wriggling legs, and gave up
only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his
side which he had never felt before.
“O God,” he thought, “what a demanding job I’ve
chosen! Day in, day out, on the road. The stresses of
selling are much greater than the actual work going
on at head office, and, in addition to that, I still have
to cope with the problems of travelling, the worries
about train connections, irregular bad food,
temporary and constantly changing human
relationships, which never come from the heart. To
hell with it all!” He felt a slight itching on the top of
his abdomen. He slowly pushed himself on his back
closer to the bed post so that he could lift his head
more easily, found the itchy part, which was entirely
covered with small white spots—he did not know
what to make of them and wanted to feel the place
with a leg, but he retracted it immediately, for the
contact felt like a cold shower all over him.
He slid back again into his earlier position. “This
getting up early,” he thought, “makes a man quite
idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling
salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when
I come back to the inn during the course of the
morning to write up the necessary orders, these
gentlemen are just sitting down to breakfast. If I were
to try that with my boss, I’d be thrown out on the
spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t be really
good for me. If I didn’t hold back for my parents’
sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the
boss and told him just what I think from the bottom
of my heart. He would’ve fallen right off his desk!
How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to
the employee from way up there. What’s more, the
boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to step
up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven’t completely
given up that hope yet. Once I’ve got together the
money to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that
should take another five or six years—I’ll do it for
sure. Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right
now I have to get up. My train leaves at five
o’clock.”
He looked over at the alarm clock ticking away by
the chest of drawers. “Good God!” he thought. It was
half past six, and the hands were going quietly on. It
was even past the half hour, already nearly quarter to.
Could the alarm have failed to ring? One saw from
the bed that it was properly set for four o’clock.
Certainly it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to
sleep peacefully through that noise which made the
furniture shake? Now, it is true he had not slept
peacefully, but evidently he had slept all the more
deeply. Still, what should he do now? The next train
left at seven o’clock. To catch that one, he would
have to go in a mad rush. The sample collection was
not packed up yet, and he really did not feel
particularly fresh and active. And even if he caught
the train, there was no avoiding a blow-up with the
boss, because the firm’s errand boy would have
waited for the five o’clock train and reported the
news of his absence long ago. He was the boss’s
minion, without backbone and intelligence. Well
then, what if he reported in sick? But that would be
extremely embarrassing and suspicious, because
during his five years’ service Gregor had not been
sick even once. The boss would certainly come with
the doctor from the health insurance company and
would reproach his parents for their lazy son and cut
short all objections with the insurance doctor’s
comments; for him everyone was completely healthy
but really lazy about work. And besides, would the
doctor in this case be totally wrong? Apart from a
really excessive drowsiness after the long sleep,
Gregor, in fact, felt quite well and even had a really
strong appetite.
As he was thinking all this over in the greatest haste,
without being able to make the decision to get out of
bed—the alarm clock was indicating exactly quarter
to seven—there was a cautious knock on the door by
the head of the bed. “Gregor,” a voice called—it was
his mother—“it’s quarter to seven. Don’t you want to
be on your way?” The soft voice! Gregor was startled
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when he heard his voice answering. It was clearly
and unmistakably his earlier voice, but in it was
intermingled, as if from below, an irrepressible,
painful squeaking, which left the words positively
distinct only in the first moment and distorted them in
the reverberation, so that one did not know if one had
heard correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail
and explain everything, but in these circumstances he
confined himself to saying, “Yes, yes, thank you
mother. I’m getting up right away.” Because of the
wooden door the change in Gregor’s voice was not
really noticeable outside, so his mother calmed down
with this explanation and shuffled off. However, as a
result of the short conversation, the other family
members became aware that Gregor was
unexpectedly still at home, and already his father was
knocking on one side door, weakly but with his fist.
“Gregor, Gregor,” he called out, “what’s going on?”
And, after a short while, he urged him on again in a
deeper voice: “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side
door, however, his sister knocked lightly. “Gregor?
Are you all right? Do you need anything?” Gregor
directed answers in both directions, “I’ll be ready
right away.” He made an effort with the most careful
articulation and inserted long pauses between the
individual words to remove everything remarkable
from his voice. His father turned back to his
breakfast. However, the sister whispered, “Gregor,
open the door—I beg you.” Gregor had no intention
of opening the door, but congratulated himself on his
precaution, acquired from travelling, of locking all
doors during the night, even at home.
First he wanted to stand up quietly and undisturbed,
get dressed, above all have breakfast, and only then
consider further action, for—he noticed this clearly—
by thinking things over in bed he would not reach a
reasonable conclusion. He remembered that he had
already often felt some light pain or other in bed,
perhaps the result of an awkward lying position,
which later, once he stood up, turned out to be purely
imaginary, and he was eager to see how his present
fantasies would gradually dissipate. That the change
in his voice was nothing other than the onset of a real
chill, an occupational illness of commercial
travellers, of that he had not the slightest doubt.
It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He
needed only to push himself up a little, and it fell by
itself. But to continue was difficult, particularly
because he was so unusually wide. He needed arms
and hands to push himself upright. Instead of these,
however, he had only many small limbs, which were
incessantly moving with very different motions and
which, in addition, he was unable to control. If he
wanted to bend one of them, then it was the first to
extend itself, and if he finally succeeded doing what
he wanted with this limb, in the meantime all the
others, as if left free, moved around in an excessively
painful agitation. “But I must not stay in bed
uselessly,” said Gregor to himself.
At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower
part of his body, but this lower part—which, by the
way, he had not yet looked at and which he also
could not picture clearly—proved itself too difficult
to move. The attempt went so slowly. When, having
become almost frantic, he finally hurled himself
forward with all his force and without thinking, he
chose his direction incorrectly, and he hit the lower
bedpost hard. The violent pain he felt revealed to him
that the lower part of his body was at the moment
probably the most sensitive.
Thus, he tried to get his upper body out of the bed
first and turned his head carefully toward the edge of
the bed. He managed to do this easily, and in spite of
its width and weight his body mass at last slowly
followed the turning of his head. But as he finally
raised his head outside the bed in the open air, he
became anxious about moving forward any further in
this manner, for if he allowed himself eventually to
fall by this process, it would really take a miracle to
prevent his head from getting injured. And at all costs
he must not lose consciousness right now. He
preferred to remain in bed.
However, after a similar effort, while he lay there
again, sighing as before, and once again saw his
small limbs fighting one another, if anything even
worse than earlier, and did not see any chance of
imposing quiet and order on this arbitrary movement,
he told himself again that he could not possibly
remain in bed and that it might be the most
reasonable thing to sacrifice everything if there was
even the slightest hope of getting himself out of bed
in the process. At the same moment, however, he did
not forget to remind himself from time to time of the
fact that calm—indeed the calmest—reflection might
be much better than confused decisions. At such
moments, he directed his gaze as precisely as he
could toward the window, but unfortunately there
was little confident cheer to be had from a glance at
the morning mist, which concealed even the other
side of the narrow street. “It’s already seven
o’clock,” he told himself at the latest sounds from the
alarm clock, “already seven o’clock and still such a
fog.” And for a little while longer he lay quietly with
weak breathing, as if perhaps waiting for normal and
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natural conditions to re-emerge out of the complete
stillness.
But then he said to himself, “Before it strikes a
quarter past seven, whatever happens I must be
completely out of bed. Besides, by then someone
from the office will arrive to inquire about me,
because the office will open before seven o’clock.”
And he made an effort then to rock his entire body
length out of the bed with a uniform motion. If he let
himself fall out of the bed in this way, his head,
which in the course of the fall he intended to lift up
sharply, would probably remain uninjured. His back
seemed to be hard; nothing would really happen to
that as a result of the fall onto the carpet. His greatest
reservation was a worry about the loud noise which
the fall must create and which presumably would
arouse, if not fright, then at least concern on the other
side of all the doors. However, he had to take that
chance.
As Gregor was already in the process of lifting
himself half out of bed—the new method was more
of a game than an effort; he needed only to rock with
a series of jerks—it struck him how easy all this
would be if someone were to come to his aid. Two
strong people—he thought of his father and the
servant girl—would have been quite sufficient. They
would only have had to push their arms under his
arched back to get him out of the bed, to bend down
with their load, and then merely to exercise patience
so that he could complete the flip onto the floor,
where his diminutive legs would then, he hoped,
acquire a purpose. Now, quite apart from the fact that
the doors were locked, should he really call out for
help? In spite of all his distress, he was unable to
suppress a smile at this idea.
He had already got to the point where, by rocking
more strongly, he maintained his equilibrium with
difficulty, and very soon he would finally have to
make a final decision, for in five minutes it would be
a quarter past seven. Then there was a ring at the
door of the apartment. “That’s someone from the
office,” he told himself, and he almost froze, while
his small limbs only danced around all the faster. For
one moment everything remained still. “They aren’t
opening,” Gregor said to himself, caught up in some
absurd hope. But of course then, as usual, the servant
girl with her firm tread went to the door and opened
it. Gregor needed to hear only the first word of the
visitor’s greeting to recognize immediately who it
was, the manager himself. Why was Gregor the only
one condemned to work in a firm where, at the
slightest lapse, someone at once attracted the greatest
suspicion? Were all the employees then collectively,
one and all, scoundrels? Among them was there then
no truly devoted person who, if he failed to use just a
couple of hours in the morning for office work,
would become abnormal from pangs of conscience
and really be in no state to get out of bed? Was it
really not enough to let an apprentice make inquiries,
if such questioning was even generally necessary?
Must the manager himself come, and in the process
must it be demonstrated to the entire innocent family
that the investigation of this suspicious circumstance
could be entrusted only to the intelligence of the
manager? And more as a consequence of the excited
state in which this idea put Gregor than as a result of
an actual decision, he swung himself with all his
might out of the bed. There was a loud thud, but not a
real crash. The fall was absorbed somewhat by the
carpet and, in addition, his back was more elastic
than Gregor had thought. For that reason the dull
noise was not quite so conspicuous. But he had not
held his head up with sufficient care and had hit it.
He turned his head, irritated and in pain, and rubbed
it on the carpet.
“Something has fallen in there,” said the manager in
the next room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine to
himself whether anything similar to what was
happening to him today could have also happened at
some point to the manager. At least one had to
concede the possibility of such a thing. However, as
if to give a rough answer to this question, the
manager now, with a squeak of his polished boots,
took a few determined steps in the next room. From
the neighbouring room on the right the sister was
whispering to inform Gregor: “Gregor, the manager
is here.” “I know,” said Gregor to himself. But he did
not dare make his voice loud enough so that his sister
could hear.
“Gregor,” his father now said from the neighbouring
room on the left, “Mr. Manager has come and is
asking why you have not left on the early train. We
don’t know what we should tell him. Besides, he also
wants to speak to you personally. So please open the
door. He will be good enough to forgive the mess in
your room.” In the middle of all this, the manager
called out in a friendly way, “Good morning, Mr.
Samsa.” “He is not well,” said his mother to the
manager, while his father was still talking at the door,
“He is not well, believe me, Mr. Manager. Otherwise
how would Gregor miss a train? The young man has
nothing in his head except business. I’m almost angry
that he never goes out in the evening. Right now he’s
been in the city eight days, but he’s been at home
every evening. He sits here with us at the table and
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reads the newspaper quietly or studies his travel
schedules. It’s a quite a diversion for him to busy
himself with fretwork. For instance, he cut out a
small frame over the course of two or three evenings.
You’d be amazed how pretty it is. It’s hanging right
inside the room. You’ll see it immediately, as soon as
Gregor opens the door. Anyway, I’m happy that
you’re here, Mr. Manager. By ourselves, we would
never have made Gregor open the door. He’s so
stubborn, and he’s certainly not well, although he
denied that this morning.” “I’m coming right away,”
said Gregor slowly and deliberately and didn’t move,
so as not to lose one word of the conversation. “My
dear lady, I cannot explain it to myself in any other
way,” said the manager; “I hope it is nothing serious.
On the other hand, I must also say that we business
people, luckily or unluckily, however one looks at it,
very often simply have to overcome a slight
indisposition for business reasons.” “So can Mr.
Manager come in to see you now?” asked his father
impatiently and knocked once again on the door.
“No,” said Gregor. In the neighbouring room on the
left an awkward stillness descended. In the
neighbouring room on the right the sister began to
sob.
Why did his sister not go to the others? She had
probably just got up out of bed now and had not even
started to get dressed yet. Then why was she crying?
Because he was not getting up and letting the
manager in, because he was in danger of losing his
position, and because then his boss would badger his
parents once again with the old demands? Those
were probably unnecessary worries right now. Gregor
was still here and was not thinking at all about
abandoning his family. At the moment he was lying
right there on the carpet, and no one who knew about
his condition would have seriously demanded that he
let the manager in. But Gregor would not be casually
dismissed right way because of this small
discourtesy, for which he would find an easy and
suitable excuse later on. It seemed to Gregor that it
might be far more reasonable to leave him in peace at
the moment, instead of disturbing him with crying
and conversation. But it was the very uncertainty
which distressed the others and excused their
behaviour.
“Mr. Samsa,” the manager was now shouting, his
voice raised, “what’s the matter? You are barricading
yourself there in your room, answering with only a
yes and a no, are making serious and unnecessary
trouble for your parents, and neglecting—I mention
this only incidentally—your commercial duties in a
truly unheard of manner. I am speaking here in the
name of your parents and your employer, and I am
requesting you in all seriousness for an immediate
and clear explanation. I am amazed. I am amazed. I
thought I knew you as a calm, reasonable person, and
now you appear suddenly to want to start parading
around in weird moods. The Chief indicated to me
earlier this very day a possible explanation for your
neglect—it concerned the collection of cash entrusted
to you a short while ago—but in truth I almost gave
him my word of honour that this explanation could
not be correct. However, now I see here your
unimaginable pig headedness, and I am totally losing
any desire to speak up for you in the slightest. And
your position is not at all the most secure. Originally
I intended to mention all this to you privately, but
since you are letting me waste my time here
uselessly, I don’t know why the matter shouldn’t
come to the attention of your parents as well. Your
productivity has also been very unsatisfactory
recently. Of course, it’s not the time of year to
conduct exceptional business, we recognize that, but
a time of year for conducting no business, there is no
such thing at all, Mr. Samsa, and such a thing must
not be permitted.”
“But Mr. Manager,” called Gregor, beside himself
and, in his agitation, forgetting everything else, “I’m
opening the door immediately, this very moment. A
slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has prevented me
from getting up. I’m still lying in bed right now. But
I’m quite refreshed once again. I’m in the midst of
getting out of bed. Just have patience for a short
moment! Things are not yet going as well as I
thought. But things are all right with me. How
suddenly this can overcome someone! Only
yesterday evening everything was fine with me. My
parents certainly know that. Actually just yesterday
evening I had a small premonition. People must have
seen that in me. Why have I not reported that to the
office? But people always think that they’ll get over
sickness without having to stay at home. Mr.
Manager! Take it easy on my parents! There is really
no basis for the criticisms which you’re now making
against me. Nobody has said a word to me about that.
Perhaps you have not read the latest orders which I
sent in. Besides, now I’m setting out on my trip on
the eight o’clock train; the few hours’ rest have made
me stronger. Mr. Manager, do not stay. I will be at
the office in person right away. Please have the
goodness to say that and to convey my respects to the
Chief.”
While Gregor was quickly blurting all this out, hardly
aware of what he was saying, he had moved close to
the chest of drawers without effort, probably as a
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result of the practice he had already had in bed, and
now he was trying to raise himself up on it. Actually,
he wanted to open the door. He really wanted to let
himself be seen and to speak with the manager. He
was keen to witness what the others now asking
about him would say when they saw him. If they
were startled, then Gregor had no more responsibility
and could be calm. But if they accepted everything
quietly, then he would have no reason to get excited
and, if he got a move on, could really be at the station
around eight o’clock. At first he slid down a few
times on the smooth chest of drawers. But at last he
gave himself a final swing and stood upright there.
He was no longer at all aware of the pains in his
lower body, no matter how they might still sting.
Now he let himself fall against the back of a nearby
chair, on the edge of which he braced himself with
his small limbs. By doing this he gained control over
himself and kept quiet, for he could now hear the
manager.
“Did you understand even a single word?” the
manager asked the parents, “Is he playing the fool
with us?” “For God’s sake,” cried the mother, already
in tears, “perhaps he’s very ill, and we’re upsetting
him. Grete! Grete!” she yelled at that point.
“Mother?” called the sister from the other side. They
were making themselves understood through
Gregor’s room. “You must go to the doctor right
away. Gregor is sick. Hurry to the doctor. Did you
hear Gregor speak just now?” “That was an animal’s
voice,” said the manager, remarkably quiet in
comparison to the mother’s cries. “Anna! Anna!”
yelled the father through the hall into the kitchen,
clapping his hands, “Fetch a locksmith right away!”
The two young women were already running through
the hall with swishing skirts—how had his sister
dressed herself so quickly?—and pulled open the
doors of the apartment. One could not hear the doors
closing at all. They probably had left them open, as is
customary in an apartment where a huge misfortune
has taken place.
However, Gregor had become much calmer. All
right, people did not understand his words any more,
although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer
than previously, perhaps because his ears had gotten
used to them. But at least people now thought that
things were not completely all right with him and
were prepared to help him. The confidence and
assurance with which the first arrangements had been
carried out made him feel good. He felt himself
included once again in the circle of humanity and was
expecting from both the doctor and the locksmith,
without differentiating between them with any real
precision, splendid and surprising results. In order to
get as clear a voice as possible for the critical
conversation which was imminent, he coughed a
little, and certainly took the trouble to do this in a
really subdued way, since it was possible that even
this noise sounded like something different from a
human cough. He no longer trusted himself to decide
any more. Meanwhile in the next room it had become
really quiet. Perhaps his parents were sitting with the
manager at the table whispering; perhaps they were
all leaning against the door and listening.
Gregor pushed himself slowly towards the door, with
the help of the easy chair, let go of it there, threw
himself against the door, held himself upright against
it—the balls of his tiny limbs had a little sticky stuff
on them—and rested there momentarily from his
exertion. Then he made an effort to turn the key in
the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately it seemed that
he had no real teeth. How then was he to grab hold of
the key? But to make up for that his jaws were
naturally very strong; with their help he managed to
get the key really moving. He did not notice that he
was obviously inflicting some damage on himself, for
a brown fluid came out of his mouth, flowed over the
key, and dripped onto the floor. “Just listen,” said the
manager in the next room. “He’s turning the key.”
For Gregor that was a great encouragement. But they
should all have called out to him, including his father
and mother, “Come on, Gregor,” they should have
shouted. “Keep going, keep working on the lock!”
Imagining that all his efforts were being followed
with suspense, he bit down frantically on the key
with all the force he could muster. As the key turned
more, he danced around the lock. Now he was
holding himself upright only with his mouth, and he
had to hang onto the key or then press it down again
with the whole weight of his body, as necessary. The
quite distinct click of the lock as it finally snapped
really woke Gregor up. Breathing heavily he said to
himself, “So I didn’t need the locksmith,” and he set
his head against the door handle to open the door
completely.
Because he had to open the door in this way, it was
already open really wide without him yet being
visible. He first had to turn himself slowly around the
edge of the door, very carefully, of course, if he did
not want to fall awkwardly on his back right at the
entrance into the room. He was still preoccupied with
this difficult movement and had no time to pay
attention to anything else, when he heard the manager
exclaim a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like the wind
whistling—and now he saw him, nearest to the door,
pressing his hand against his open mouth and moving
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slowly back, as if an invisible constant force was
pushing him away. His mother—in spite of the
presence of the manager she was standing here with
her hair sticking up on end, still a mess from the
night—first looked at his father with her hands
clasped, then went two steps towards Gregor and
collapsed right in the middle of her skirts, which
were spread out all around her, her face sunk on her
breast, completely concealed. His father clenched his
fist with a hostile expression, as if he wished to push
Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly
around the living room, covered his eyes with his
hands, and cried so that his mighty breast shook.
At this point Gregor did not take one step into the
room, but leaned his body from the inside against the
firmly bolted wing of the door, so that only half his
body was visible, as well as his head, tilted sideways,
with which he peeped over at the others. Meanwhile
it had become much brighter. Standing out clearly
from the other side of the street was a section of the
endless gray-black house situated opposite—it was a
hospital—with its severe regular windows breaking
up the facade. The rain was still coming down, but
only in large individual drops visibly and firmly
thrown down one by one onto the ground. Countless
breakfast dishes were standing piled around on the
table, because for his father breakfast was the most
important meal time in the day, which he prolonged
for hours by reading various newspapers. Directly
across on the opposite wall hung a photograph of
Gregor from the time of his military service; it was a
picture of him as a lieutenant, as he, smiling and
worry free, with his hand on his sword, demanded
respect for his bearing and uniform. The door to the
hall was ajar, and since the door to the apartment was
also open, one could see out into the landing of the
apartment and the start of the staircase going down.
“Now,” said Gregor, well aware that he was the only
one who had kept his composure. “I’ll get dressed
right away, pack up the collection of samples, and set
off. You’ll allow me to set out on my way, will you
not? You see, Mr. Manager, I am not pig-headed, and
I am happy to work. Travelling is exhausting, but I
couldn’t live without it. Where are you going, Mr.
Manager? To the office? Really? Will you report
everything truthfully? A person can be incapable of
work momentarily, but that’s precisely the best time
to remember the earlier achievements and to consider
that later, after the obstacles have been shoved aside,
the person will certainly work all the more diligently
and intensely. I am really so indebted to Mr. Chief—
you know that perfectly well. On the other hand, I am
concerned about my parents and my sister. I’m in a
fix, but I’ll work myself out of it again. Don’t make
things more difficult for me than they already are.
Speak up on my behalf in the office! People don’t
like travelling salesmen. I know that. People think
they earn pots of money and thus lead a fine life.
People don’t even have any special reason to think
through this judgment more clearly. But you, Mr.
Manager, you have a better perspective on what’s
involved than other people, even, I tell you in total
confidence, a better perspective than Mr. Chief
himself, who in his capacity as the employer may
easily let his judgment make mistakes at the expense
of an employee. You also know well enough that the
travelling salesman who is outside the office almost
the entire year can become so easily a victim of
gossip, coincidences, and groundless complaints,
against which it’s totally impossible for him to
defend himself, since for the most part he doesn’t
hear about them at all and only then when he’s
exhausted after finishing a trip and at home gets to
feel in his own body the nasty consequences, which
can’t be thoroughly explored back to their origins.
Mr. Manager, don’t leave without speaking a word
indicating to me that you’ll at least concede that I’m
a little in the right!”
But at Gregor’s first words the manager had already
turned away, and now he looked back with pursed
lips at Gregor over his twitching shoulders. During
Gregor’s speech he was not still for a moment but
kept moving away towards the door, without taking
his eyes off Gregor, but really gradually, as if there
was a secret ban on leaving the room. He was already
in the hall, and given the sudden movement with
which he finally pulled his foot out of the living
room, one could have believed that he had just
burned the sole of his foot. In the hall, however, he
stretched his right hand out away from his body
towards the staircase, as if some truly supernatural
relief was waiting for him there.
Gregor realized that he must not under any
circumstances allow the manager to go away in this
frame of mind, especially if his position in the firm
was not to be placed in the greatest danger. His
parents did not understand all this very well. Over the
long years, they had developed the conviction that
Gregor was set up for life in this firm and, in
addition, they had so much to do nowadays with their
present troubles that all foresight was foreign to
them. But Gregor had this foresight. The manager
must be held back, calmed down, convinced, and
finally won over. The future of Gregor and his family
really depended on it! If only the sister had been
there! She was clever. She had already cried while
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Gregor was still lying quietly on his back. And the
manager, this friend of the ladies, would certainly let
himself be guided by her. She would have closed the
door to the apartment and talked him out of his fright
in the hall. But the sister was not even there. Gregor
must deal with it himself. And without thinking that
as yet he did not know anything about his present
ability to move and without thinking that his speech
possibly—indeed probably—had once again not been
understood, he left the wing of the door, pushed
himself through the opening, and wanted to go over
to the manager, who was already holding tight with
both hands gripping the handrail on the landing in a
ridiculous way. But as Gregor looked for something
to steady himself, with a small scream he
immediately fell down onto his numerous little legs.
Scarcely had this happened, when he felt for the first
time that morning a general physical well being. The
small limbs had firm floor under them; they obeyed
perfectly, as he noticed to his joy, and even strove to
carry him forward in the direction he wanted. Right
away he believed that the final amelioration of all his
suffering was immediately at hand. But at the very
moment when he lay on the floor rocking in a
restrained manner quite close and directly across
from his mother, who had apparently totally sunk into
herself, she suddenly sprang right up with her arms
spread far apart and her fingers extended and cried
out, “Help, for God’s sake, help!” She held her head
bowed down, as if she wanted to view Gregor better,
but ran senselessly back, contradicting that gesture,
forgetting that behind her stood the table with all the
dishes on it. When she reached the table, she sat
down heavily on it, as if absent-mindedly, and did not
appear to notice at all that next to her coffee was
pouring out onto the carpet in a full stream from the
large, overturned container.
“Mother, mother,” said Gregor quietly and looked
over towards her. The manager had momentarily
vanished completely from his mind. On the other
hand, when he saw the flowing coffee Gregor could
not stop himself snapping his jaws in the air a few
times. At that his mother screamed all over again,
hurried from the table, and collapsed into the arms of
his father, who was rushing towards her. But Gregor
had no time right now for his parents—the manager
was already on the staircase. With his chin on the
bannister, the manager looked back for the last time.
Gregor took an initial movement to catch up to him if
possible. But the manager must have suspected
something, because he made a leap down over a few
stairs and disappeared, still shouting “Huh!” The
sound echoed throughout the entire stairwell.
But now unfortunately this flight of the manager
seemed to bewilder his father completely. Earlier he
had been relatively calm. For instead of running after
the manager himself or at least not hindering Gregor
from his pursuit, with his right hand he grabbed hold
of the manager’s cane, which he had left behind on a
chair with his hat and overcoat. With his left hand,
his father grabbed a large newspaper from the table
and, stamping his feet on the floor, he set out to drive
Gregor back into his room by waving the cane and
the newspaper. No request of Gregor’s was of any
use; no request would even be understood. No matter
how willing he was to turn his head respectfully, his
father just stomped all the harder with his feet.
Across the room from him his mother had pulled
open a window, in spite of the cool weather, and
leaning out with her hands on her cheeks, she pushed
her face far outside the window. Between the lane
and the stairwell a strong draught came up, the
curtains on the window flew around, the newspapers
on the table rustled, and individual sheets fluttered
down over the floor. The father relentlessly pushed
his way forward, hissing like a wild man. Now,
Gregor still had no practice at all in going
backwards—it was really very slow going. If Gregor
only had been allowed to turn himself around, he
would have been in his room right away, but he was
afraid to make his father impatient by the timeconsuming process of turning around, and each
moment he faced the threat of a mortal blow on his
back or his head from the cane in his father’s hand.
Finally Gregor had no other option, for he noticed
with horror that he did not understand yet how to
maintain his direction going backwards. And so he
began, amid constantly anxious sideways glances in
his father’s direction, to turn himself around as
quickly as possible, although in truth this was only
done very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good
intentions, for he did not disrupt Gregor in this
motion, but with the tip of the cane from a distance
he even directed Gregor’s rotating movement now
and then. If only his father had not hissed so
unbearably! Because of that Gregor totally lost his
head. He was already almost totally turned around,
when, always with this hissing in his ear, he just
made a mistake and turned himself back a little. But
when he finally was successful in getting his head in
front of the door opening, it became clear that his
body was too wide to go through any further.
Naturally his father, in his present mental state, had
no idea of, say, opening the other wing of the door a
bit to create a suitable passage for Gregor to get
through. His single fixed thought was that Gregor
must get into his room as quickly as possible. He
would never have allowed the elaborate preparations
that Gregor required to orient himself and thus
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perhaps in this way to get through the door. Perhaps
with his excessive noise he was now driving Gregor
forwards as if there were no obstacle. Behind Gregor
the sound at this point was no longer like the voice of
only a single father. Now it was really no longer a
joke, and Gregor forced himself, come what might,
into the door. One side of his body was lifted up. He
lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was
really sore from the scraping. On the white door ugly
blotches were left. Soon he was stuck fast and would
not have been able to move any more on his own.
The tiny legs on one side hung twitching in the air
above, and the ones on the other side were pushed
painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one
really strong liberating push from behind, and he
scurried, bleeding severely, far into the interior of his
room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and
then finally it was quiet.
II
Gregor first woke up from his heavy swoon-like
sleep in the evening twilight. He would certainly
have woken up soon afterwards even without any
disturbance, for he felt himself sufficiently rested and
wide awake, although it appeared to him as if a
hurried step and a cautious closing of the door to the
hall had roused him. Light from the electric
streetlamps lay pale here and there on the ceiling of
his room and on the higher parts of the furniture, but
underneath around Gregor it was dark. He pushed
himself slowly toward the door, still groping
awkwardly with his feelers, which he now learned to
value for the first time, to check what was happening
there. His left side seemed one single long
unpleasantly stretched scar, and he really had to
hobble on his two rows of legs. In addition, one small
leg had been seriously wounded in the course of the
morning incident—it was almost a miracle that only
one had been hurt—and dragged lifelessly behind.
By the door he first noticed what had really lured him
there: it was the smell of something to eat. For a bowl
stood there, filled with sweetened milk, in which
swam tiny pieces of white bread. He almost laughed
with joy, for he had an even greater hunger than in
the morning, and he immediately dipped his head
almost up to and over his eyes down into the milk.
But he soon drew it back again in disappointment,
not just because it was difficult for him to eat on
account of his delicate left side—he could eat only if
his entire panting body worked in a coordinated
way—but also because the milk, which otherwise
was his favourite drink and which his sister had
certainly placed there for that reason, did not appeal
to him at all. He turned away from the bowl almost
with aversion and crept back into the middle of the
room.
In the living room, as Gregor saw through the crack
in the door, the gas was lit, but where, on other
occasions at this time of day, his father was
accustomed to read the afternoon newspaper in a loud
voice to his mother and sometimes also to his sister,
at the moment no sound was audible. Now, perhaps
this reading aloud, about which his sister had always
spoken and written to him, had recently fallen out of
their general routine. But it was so still all around, in
spite of the fact that the apartment was certainly not
empty. “What a quiet life the family leads,” said
Gregor to himself, and, as he stared fixedly out in
front of him into the darkness, he felt a great pride
that he had been able to provide such a life for his
parents and his sister in such a beautiful apartment.
But how would things go if now all tranquillity, all
prosperity, all contentment should come to a horrible
end? In order not to lose himself in such thoughts,
Gregor preferred to set himself moving, so he
crawled up and down in his room.
Once during the long evening one side door and then
the other door were opened just a tiny crack and
quickly closed again. Someone presumably needed to
come in but had then thought better of it. Gregor
immediately took up a position by the living room
door, determined to bring in the hesitant visitor
somehow or other or at least to find out who it might
be. But now the door was not opened any more, and
Gregor waited in vain. Earlier, when the door had
been barred, they had all wanted to come in to him;
now, when he had opened one door and when the
others had obviously been opened during the day, no
one came any more, and now the keys were stuck in
the locks on the outside.
The light in the living room was turned off only late
at night, and it was now easy to establish that his
parents and his sister had stayed awake all this time,
for one could hear them clearly as all three moved
away on tiptoe. Now it was certain that no one would
come in to Gregor any more until the morning. Thus,
he had a long time to think undisturbed about how he
should reorganize his life from scratch. But the high,
open room, in which he was compelled to lie flat on
the floor, made him anxious, without his being able
to figure out the reason, for he had lived in the room
for five years. With a half-unconscious turn and not
without a little shame he scurried under the couch,
where, in spite of the fact that his back was a little
cramped and he could no longer lift up his head, he
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felt very comfortable right away and was sorry only
that his body was too wide to fit completely under the
couch.
There he remained the entire night, which he spent
partly in a state of semi-sleep, out of which his
hunger constantly woke him with a start, but partly in
a state of worry and murky hopes, which all led to the
conclusion that for the time being he would have to
keep calm and with patience and the greatest
consideration for his family tolerate the troubles
which in his present condition he was now forced to
cause them.
Already early in the morning—it was still almost
night—Gregor had an opportunity to test the power
of the decisions he had just made, for his sister,
almost fully dressed, opened the door from the hall
into his room and looked eagerly inside. She did not
find him immediately, but when she noticed him
under the couch—God, he had to be somewhere or
other, for he could hardly fly away—she got such a
shock that, without being able to control herself, she
slammed the door shut once again from the outside.
However, as if she was sorry for her behaviour, she
immediately opened the door again and walked in on
her tiptoes, as if she was in the presence of a serious
invalid or a total stranger. Gregor had pushed his
head forward just to the edge of the couch and was
observing her. Would she really notice that he had
left the milk standing, not indeed from any lack of
hunger, and would she bring in something else to eat
more suitable for him? If she did not do it on her
own, he would sooner starve to death than call her
attention to the fact, although he had a really
powerful urge to move beyond the couch, throw
himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her for something
or other good to eat. But his sister noticed right away
with astonishment that the bowl was still full, with
only a little milk spilled around it. She picked it up
immediately, although not with her bare hands but
with a rag, and took it out of the room. Gregor was
extremely curious what she would bring as a
substitute, and he pictured to himself very different
ideas about it. But he never could have guessed what
his sister, out of the goodness of her heart, in fact,
did. To test his taste, she brought him an entire
selection, all spread out on an old newspaper. There
were old half-rotten vegetables, bones from the
evening meal, covered with a white sauce which had
almost solidified, some raisins and almonds, cheese
which Gregor had declared inedible two days earlier,
a slice of dry bread, a slice with butter, and a slice of
salted bread smeared with butter. In addition to all
this, she put down the bowl—probably designated
once and for all as Gregor’s—into which she had
poured some water. And out of her delicacy of
feeling, since she knew that Gregor would not eat in
front of her, she went away very quickly and even
turned the key in the lock, so that Gregor could now
know that he might make himself as comfortable as
he wished. Gregor’s small limbs buzzed now that the
time for eating had come. His wounds must, in any
case, have already healed completely. He felt no
handicap on that score. He was astonished at that and
thought about how more than a month ago he had cut
his finger very slightly with a knife and how this
wound had hurt enough even the day before
yesterday. “Am I now going to be less sensitive?” he
thought, already sucking greedily on the cheese,
which had strongly attracted him right away, more
than all the other foods. Quickly and with his eyes
watering with satisfaction, he ate one after the other
the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce. The fresh
food, by contrast, did not taste good to him. He could
not even bear the smell and carried the things he
wanted to eat a little distance away. By the time his
sister slowly turned the key as a sign that he should
withdraw, he was long finished with everything and
now lay lazily in the same spot. The noise
immediately startled him, in spite of the fact that he
was already almost asleep, and he scurried back again
under the couch. But it cost him great self-control to
remain under the couch, even for the short time his
sister was in the room, because his body had filled
out somewhat on account of the rich meal and in the
narrow space there he could scarcely breathe. In the
midst of minor attacks of asphyxiation, he looked at
her with somewhat protruding eyes, as his
unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom, not just
the remnants, but even the foods which Gregor had
not touched at all, as if these were also now useless,
and as she dumped everything quickly into a bucket,
which she closed with a wooden lid, and then carried
all of it out of the room. She had hardly turned
around before Gregor had already dragged himself
out from under the couch, stretched out, and let his
body expand.
In this way Gregor now got his food every day, once
in the morning, when his parents and the servant girl
were still asleep, and a second time after the common
noon meal, for his parents were asleep then for a little
while, and the servant girl was sent off by his sister
on some errand or other. They certainly would not
have wanted Gregor to starve to death, but perhaps
they could not have endured finding out what he ate
other than by hearsay. Perhaps his sister also wanted
to spare them what was possibly only a small grief,
for they were really suffering quite enough already.
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What sorts of excuses people had used on that first
morning to get the doctor and the locksmith out of
the house again Gregor was completely unable to
ascertain. Since they could not understand him, no
one, not even his sister, thought that he might be able
to understand others, and thus, when his sister was in
his room, he had to be content with listening now and
then to her sighs and invocations to the saints. Only
later, when she had grown somewhat accustomed to
everything—naturally there could never be any talk
of her growing completely accustomed to it—Gregor
sometimes caught a comment which was intended to
be friendly or could be interpreted as such. “Well,
today it tasted good to him,” she said, if Gregor had
really cleaned up what he had to eat; whereas, in the
reverse situation, which gradually repeated itself
more and more frequently, she used to say almost
sadly, “Now everything has been left again.”
But while Gregor could get no new information
directly, he did hear a good deal from the room next
door, and as soon as he heard voices, he scurried
right away to the appropriate door and pressed his
entire body against it. In the early days especially,
there was no conversation which was not concerned
with him in some way or other, even if only in secret.
For two days at all meal times discussions of that
subject could be heard on how people should now
behave; but they also talked about the same subject in
the times between meals, for there were always at
least two family members at home, since no one
really wanted to remain in the house alone and people
could not under any circumstances leave the
apartment completely empty. In addition, on the very
first day the servant girl—it was not completely clear
what and how much she knew about what had
happened—on her knees had begged his mother to let
her go immediately, and when she said good bye
about fifteen minutes later, she thanked them for the
dismissal with tears in her eyes, as if she was
receiving the greatest favour which people had shown
her there, and, without anyone demanding it from
her, she swore a fearful oath not to reveal anything to
anyone, not even the slightest detail.
Now his sister had to team up with his mother to do
the cooking, although that did not create much
trouble because people were eating almost nothing.
Again and again Gregor listened as one of them
vainly invited another one to eat and received no
answer other than “Thank you. I’ve had enough” or
something like that. And perhaps they had stopped
having anything to drink, too. His sister often asked
his father whether he wanted to have a beer and
gladly offered to fetch it herself, and when his father
was silent, she said, in order to remove any
reservations he might have, that she could send the
caretaker’s wife to get it. But then his father finally
said a resounding “No,” and nothing more would be
spoken about it.
Already during the first day his father laid out all the
financial circumstances and prospects to his mother
and to his sister as well. From time to time he stood
up from the table and pulled out of the small lockbox
salvaged from his business, which had collapsed five
years previously, some document or other or some
notebook. The sound was audible as he opened up the
complicated lock and, after removing what he was
looking for, locked it up again. These explanations by
his father were, in part, the first enjoyable thing that
Gregor had the chance to listen to since his
imprisonment. He had thought that nothing at all was
left over for his father from that business; at least his
father had told him nothing to contradict that view,
and Gregor in any case had not asked him about it. At
the time Gregor’s only concern had been to use
everything he had in order to allow his family to
forget as quickly as possible the business misfortune
which had brought them all into a state of complete
hopelessness. And so at that point he had started to
work with a special intensity and from a minor
assistant had become, almost overnight, a travelling
salesman, who naturally had entirely different
possibilities for earning money and whose successes
at work were converted immediately into the form of
cash commissions, which could be set out on the
table at home for his astonished and delighted family.
Those had been beautiful days, and they had never
come back afterwards, at least not with the same
splendour, in spite of the fact that Gregor later earned
so much money that he was in a position to bear the
expenses of the entire family, costs which he, in fact,
did bear. They had become quite accustomed to it,
both the family and Gregor as well. They took the
money with thanks, and he happily surrendered it, but
a special warmth was no longer present. Only the
sister had remained still close to Gregor, and it was
his secret plan to send her next year to the
Conservatory, regardless of the great expense which
that necessarily involved and which would be made
up in other ways. In contrast to Gregor, she loved
music very much and knew how to play the violin
charmingly. Now and then during Gregor’s short
stays in the city the Conservatory was mentioned in
conversations with his sister, but always merely as a
beautiful dream, whose realization was unimaginable,
and their parents never listened to these innocent
expectations with pleasure. But Gregor thought about
them with scrupulous consideration and intended to
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explain the matter in all seriousness on Christmas
Eve.
In his present situation, such completely futile ideas
went through his head, while he pushed himself right
up against the door and listened. Sometimes in his
general exhaustion he could not listen any more and
let his head bang listlessly against the door, but he
immediately pulled himself together once more, for
even the small sound which he made by this motion
was heard near by and silenced everyone. “There he
goes on again,” said his father after a while, clearly
turning towards the door, and only then would the
interrupted conversation gradually be resumed again.
Now, Gregor found out clearly enough—for his
father tended to repeat himself from time to time in
his explanations, partly because he had not personally
concerned himself with these matters for a long time
now, and partly because his mother did not
understand everything right away the first time—that,
in spite all bad luck, an amount of money, although a
very small one, was still available from the old times
and that the interest, which had not been touched, had
in the intervening time allowed it to increase a little.
Furthermore, in addition to this, the money which
Gregor had brought home every month—he had kept
only a few crowns for himself—had not been
completely spent and had grown into a small capital
amount. Gregor, behind his door, nodded eagerly,
rejoicing over this unanticipated foresight and
frugality. True, with this excess money, he could
really have paid off more of his father’s debt to his
employer and the day on which he could be rid of this
position would have been a lot closer, but now things
were doubtless better the way his father had arranged
them.
At the moment, however, this money was not nearly
sufficient to permit the family to live on the interest
payments. Perhaps it would be enough to maintain
the family for one or at most two years, that was all.
Thus, it only added up to an amount which one
should not really draw upon and which must be set
aside for an emergency. But they had to earn money
to live on. Now, it’s true his father was indeed a
healthy man, but he was old and had not worked for
five years and thus could not be counted on for very
much. He had in these five years, the first holidays of
his laborious but unsuccessful life, put on a good deal
of fat and thus had become really heavy. And should
his old mother now perhaps work for money, a
woman who suffered from asthma, for whom
wandering through the apartment even now was a
great strain and who spent every second day on the
sofa by the open window having trouble with her
breathing? Should his sister earn money, a girl who
was still a seventeen-year-old child and whose earlier
life style had been so very delightful that it had
consisted of dressing herself nicely, sleeping in late,
helping around the house, taking part in a few modest
enjoyments and, above all, playing the violin? When
it came to talking about this need to earn money, at
first Gregor went away from the door and threw
himself on the cool leather sofa beside the door, for
he was quite hot from shame and sorrow.
Often he lay there all night long, not sleeping at all,
just scratching on the leather for hours at a time. Or
he undertook the very difficult task of pushing a chair
over to the window. Then he crept up on the window
sill and, braced on the chair, leaned against the
window to look out, obviously with some memory or
other of the liberating sense which looking out the
window used to bring him in earlier times. For, in
fact, from day to day he perceived things with less
and less clarity, even those only a short distance
away. The hospital across the street, the all-toofrequent sight of which he had previously cursed, was
not visible at all any more, and if he had not been
very well aware that he lived in the quiet but
completely urban Charlotte Street, he could have
believed that from his window he was peering out at
a featureless wasteland, in which the grey heaven and
the grey earth had merged and were
indistinguishable. His observant sister only had to
notice a couple of times that the chair stood by the
window; then, after cleaning up the room, each time,
she pushed the chair back right against the window
again and from now on she even left the inner
casements open.
If Gregor had only been able to speak to his sister and
thank her for everything that she had to do for him,
he would have tolerated her service more easily. As it
was, he suffered under it. The sister admittedly
sought to cover up the awkwardness of everything as
much as possible, and, as time went by, she naturally
became more successful at it. But with the passing of
time Gregor also came to understand everything
much more clearly. Even her entrance was terrible for
him. As soon as she came in, she ran straight to the
window, without taking the time to shut the door, in
spite of the fact that she was otherwise very
considerate in sparing anyone the sight of Gregor’s
room, and yanked the window open with eager
hands, as if she was almost suffocating, and remained
for a while by the window breathing deeply, even
when it was still so cold. With this running and noise
she frightened Gregor twice every day. The entire
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time he trembled under the couch, and yet he knew
very well that she would certainly have spared him
gladly if it had only been possible to remain with the
window closed in a room where Gregor lived.
On one occasion—about one month had already gone
by since Gregor’s transformation, and there was now
no particular reason any more for his sister to be
startled at Gregor’s appearance—she arrived a little
earlier than usual and came upon Gregor as he was
still looking out the window, immobile and well
positioned to frighten someone. It would not have
come as a surprise to Gregor if she had not come in,
since his position was preventing her from opening
the window immediately. But not only did she not
step inside; she even retreated and shut the door. A
stranger really could have concluded from this that
Gregor had been lying in wait for her and wanted to
bite her. Of course, Gregor immediately concealed
himself under the couch, but he had to wait until
noon before his sister returned, and she seemed much
less calm than usual. From this he realized that his
appearance was still intolerable to her and must
remain intolerable to her in future, and that she really
had to exert a lot of self-control not to run away from
a glimpse of only the small part of his body which
stuck out from under the couch. In order to spare her
even this sight, one day he dragged the sheet on his
back and onto the couch—this task took him four
hours—and arranged it in such a way that he was
now completely concealed and his sister, even if she
bent down, could not see him. If this sheet was not
necessary as far as she was concerned, then she could
remove it, for it was clear enough that Gregor could
not derive any pleasure from isolating himself away
so completely. But she left the sheet just as it was,
and Gregor believed he even caught a look of
gratitude when, on one occasion, he carefully lifted
up the sheet a little with his head to check, as his
sister took stock of the new arrangement.
In the first two weeks his parents could not bring
themselves to visit him, and he often heard how they
fully acknowledged his sister’s present work;
whereas, earlier they had often got annoyed at his
sister because she had seemed to them a somewhat
useless young woman. However, now both his father
and his mother frequently waited in front of Gregor’s
door while his sister cleaned up inside, and as soon as
she came out, she had to explain in great detail how
things looked in the room, what Gregor had eaten,
how he had behaved this time, and whether perhaps a
slight improvement was perceptible. In any event, his
mother comparatively soon wanted to visit Gregor,
but his father and his sister restrained her, at first with
reasons which Gregor listened to very attentively and
which he completely endorsed. Later, however, they
had to hold her back forcefully, and when she then
cried “Let me go to Gregor. He’s my unfortunate
son! Don’t you understand that I have to go to him?”
Gregor then thought that perhaps it would be a good
thing if his mother came in, not every day, of course,
but maybe once a week. She understood everything
much better than his sister, who, in spite of all her
courage, was still merely a child and, in the last
analysis, had perhaps undertaken such a difficult task
only out of childish recklessness.
Gregor’s wish to see his mother was soon realized.
While during the day Gregor, out of consideration for
his parents, did not want to show himself by the
window, he could not crawl around very much on the
few square metres of the floor. He found it difficult to
bear lying quietly during the night, and soon eating
no longer gave him the slightest pleasure. So for
diversion he acquired the habit of crawling back and
forth across the walls and ceiling. He was especially
fond of hanging from the ceiling. The experience was
quite different from lying on the floor. It was easier
to breathe, a slight vibration went through his body,
and in the midst of the almost happy amusement
which Gregor found up there, it could happen that, to
his own surprise, he let go and hit the floor. However,
now he naturally controlled his body quite differently
than before, and he did not injure himself in such a
great fall. Now, his sister noticed immediately the
new amusement which Gregor had found for
himself—for as he crept around he left behind here
and there traces of his sticky stuff—and so she got
the idea of making the area where Gregor could creep
around as large as possible and thus of removing the
furniture which got in the way, especially the chest of
drawers and the writing desk. But she was in no
position to do this by herself. She did not dare to ask
her father to help, and the servant girl would certainly
not have assisted her, for although this girl, about
sixteen years old, had courageously remained since
the dismissal of the previous cook, she had begged
for the privilege of being allowed to stay permanently
confined to the kitchen and of having to open the
door only in answer to a special summons. Thus, his
sister had no other choice but to involve his mother at
a time when his father was absent. His mother
approached Gregor’s room with cries of excited joy,
but she fell silent at the door. Of course, his sister
first checked whether everything in the room was in
order. Only then did she let his mother enter. Gregor
had drawn the sheet down with the greatest haste
even further and wrinkled it more. The whole thing
really looked just like a coverlet thrown carelessly
over the couch. On this occasion, Gregor also held
202
back from spying out from under the sheet. He
refrained from looking at his mother this time and
was merely happy that she had now come. “Come on.
You can’t see him,” said his sister and evidently led
his mother by the hand. Now Gregor listened as these
two weak women shifted the still heavy old chest of
drawers from its position and as his sister constantly
took on herself the greatest part of the work, without
listening to the warnings of his mother, who was
afraid that she would strain herself. The work lasted a
very long time. After about a quarter of an hour had
already gone by, his mother said it would be better if
they left the chest of drawers where it was, because,
in the first place, it was too heavy: they would not be
finished before his father’s arrival, and leaving the
chest of drawers in the middle of the room would
block all Gregor’s pathways, but, in the second place,
they could not be at all certain that Gregor would be
pleased with the removal of the furniture. To her the
reverse seemed to be true; the sight of the empty
walls pierced her right to the heart, and why should
Gregor not feel the same, since he had been
accustomed to the room furnishings for a long time
and would therefore feel himself abandoned in an
empty room. “And is it not the case,” his mother
concluded very quietly, almost whispering, as if she
wished to prevent Gregor, whose exact location she
really did not know, from hearing even the sound of
her voice—for she was convinced that he did not
understand her words—“and isn’t it a fact that by
removing the furniture we’re showing that we’re
giving up all hope of an improvement and are leaving
him to his own resources without any consideration?
I think it would be best if we tried to keep the room
exactly in the condition it was in before, so that,
when Gregor returns to us, he finds everything
unchanged and can forget the intervening time all the
more easily.”
As he heard his mother’s words Gregor realized that
the lack of all immediate human contact, together
with the monotonous life surrounded by the family
over the course of these two months, must have
confused his understanding, because otherwise he
could not explain to himself how he, in all
seriousness, could have been so keen to have his
room emptied. Was he really eager to let the warm
room, comfortably furnished with pieces he had
inherited, be turned into a cavern in which he would,
of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions
without disturbance, but at the same time with a
quick and complete forgetting of his human past as
well? Was he then at this point already on the verge
of forgetting and was it only the voice of his mother,
which he had not heard for a long time, that had
aroused him? Nothing was to be removed—
everything must remain. In his condition he could not
function without the beneficial influences of his
furniture. And if the furniture prevented him from
carrying out his senseless crawling about all over the
place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a
great benefit.
But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She
had grown accustomed, certainly not without
justification, so far as the discussion of matters
concerning Gregor was concerned, to act as a special
expert with respect to their parents, and so now the
mother’s advice was for his sister sufficient reason to
insist on the removal, not only of the chest of drawers
and the writing desk, which were the only items she
had thought about at first, but also of all the furniture,
with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of
course, it was not only childish defiance and her
recent very unexpected and hard won self-confidence
which led her to this demand. She had also actually
observed that Gregor needed a great deal of room to
creep about; the furniture, on the other hand, as far as
one could see, was not the slightest use. But perhaps
the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her
age also played a role. This feeling sought release at
every opportunity, and with it Grete now felt tempted
to want to make Gregor’s situation even more
terrifying, so that then she would be able to do even
more for him than she had up to now. For surely no
one except Grete would ever trust themselves to enter
a room in which Gregor ruled the empty walls all by
himself.
And so she did not let herself be dissuaded from her
decision by her mother, who in this room seemed
uncertain of herself in her sheer agitation and soon
kept quiet, helping his sister with all her energy to get
the chest of drawers out of the room. Now, Gregor
could still do without the chest of drawers if need be,
but the writing desk really had to stay. And scarcely
had the women left the room with the chest of
drawers, groaning as they pushed it, when Gregor
stuck his head out from under the sofa to see how he
could intervene, cautiously and with as much
consideration as possible. But unfortunately it was
his mother who came back into the room first, while
Grete had her arms wrapped around the chest of
drawers in the next room and was rocking it back and
forth by herself, of course without moving it from its
position. But his mother was not used to the sight of
Gregor; he could have made her ill, and so,
frightened, Gregor scurried backwards right to the
other end of the sofa. However, he could no longer
prevent the sheet from moving forward a little. That
was enough to catch his mother’s attention. She came
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to a halt, stood still for a moment, and then went back
to Grete.
Although Gregor kept repeating to himself over and
over that really nothing unusual was going on, that
only a few pieces of furniture were being rearranged,
he soon had to admit to himself that the movements
of the women to and fro, their quiet conversations,
and the scraping of the furniture on the floor affected
him like a great commotion stirred up on all sides,
and, so firmly was he pulling in his head and legs and
pressing his body into the floor, he had to tell himself
unequivocally that he would not be able to endure all
this much longer. They were cleaning out his room,
taking away from him everything he cherished; they
had already dragged out the chest of drawers in
which the fret saw and other tools were kept, and
they were now loosening the writing desk which was
fixed tight to the floor, the desk on which he, as a
business student, a school student, indeed even as an
elementary school student, had written out his
assignments. At that moment he really did not have
any more time to check the good intentions of the
two women, whose existence he had in any case
almost forgotten, because in their exhaustion they
were working really silently, and the heavy stumbling
of their feet was the only sound to be heard.
clear to Gregor: she wanted to bring his mother to a
safe place and then chase him down from the wall.
Well, let her just try! He squatted on his picture and
did not hand it over. He would sooner spring into
Grete’s face.
And so he scuttled out—the women were just
propping themselves up on the writing desk in the
next room in order to take a short breather. He
changed the direction of his path four times. He
really did not know what he should rescue first. Then
he saw hanging conspicuously on the wall, which
was otherwise already empty, the picture of the
woman dressed in nothing but fur. He quickly
scurried up over it and pressed himself against the
glass which held it in place and which made his hot
abdomen feel good. At least this picture, which
Gregor at the moment completely concealed, surely
no one would now take away. He twisted his head
towards the door of the living room to observe the
women as they came back in.
But Grete’s words had immediately made the mother
very uneasy. She walked to the side, caught sight of
the enormous brown splotch on the flowered
wallpaper, and, before she became truly aware that
what she was looking at was Gregor, screamed out in
a high-pitched raw voice “Oh God, oh God” and fell
with outstretched arms, as if she was surrendering
everything, down onto the couch and lay there
motionless. “Gregor, you. . .” cried out his sister with
a raised fist and an urgent glare. Since his
transformation these were the first words which she
had directed right at him. She ran into the room next
door to bring some spirits or other with which she
could revive her mother from her fainting spell.
Gregor wanted to help as well—there was time
enough to save the picture—but he was stuck fast on
the glass and had to tear himself loose forcibly. Then
he also scurried into the next room, as if he could
give his sister some advice, as in earlier times, but
then he had to stand there idly behind her, while she
rummaged about among various small bottles. Still,
she was frightened when she turned around. A bottle
fell onto the floor and shattered. A splinter of glass
wounded Gregor in the face, and some corrosive
medicine or other dripped over him. Now, without
lingering any longer, Grete took as many small
bottles as she could hold and ran with them in to her
mother. She slammed the door shut with her foot.
Gregor was now shut off from his mother, who was
perhaps near death, thanks to him. He could not open
the door; he did not want to chase away his sister,
who had to remain with her mother. At this point he
had nothing to do but wait, and, overwhelmed with
self-reproach and worry, he began to creep and crawl
over everything: walls, furniture, and ceiling. Finally,
in his despair, as the entire room started to spin
around him, he fell onto the middle of the large table.
They had not allowed themselves very much rest and
were coming back right away. Grete had placed her
arm around her mother and held her tightly. “So what
shall we take now?” said Grete and looked around
her. Then her glance met Gregor’s from the wall. She
kept her composure only because her mother was
there. She bent her face towards her mother in order
to prevent her from looking around, and said,
although in a trembling voice and too quickly,
“Come, wouldn’t it be better to go back to the living
room for just another moment?” Grete’s purpose was
A short time elapsed. Gregor lay there limply. All
around was still. Perhaps that was a good sign. Then
there was ring at the door. The servant girl was
naturally shut up in her kitchen, and therefore Grete
had to go to open the door. The father had arrived.
“What’s happened?” were his first words. Grete’s
appearance had told him everything. Grete replied
with a dull voice; evidently she was pressing her face
against her father’s chest: “Mother fainted, but she’s
getting better now. Gregor has broken loose.” “Yes, I
have expected that,” said his father, “I always warned
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you of that, but you women don’t want to listen.” It
was clear to Gregor that his father had badly
misunderstood Grete’s all-too-brief message and was
assuming that Gregor had committed some violent
crime or other. Thus, Gregor now had to find his
father to calm him down, for he had neither the time
nor the ability to explain things to him. And so he
rushed away to the door of his room and pushed
himself against it, so that his father could see right
away as he entered from the hall that Gregor fully
intended to return at once to his room, that it was not
necessary to drive him back, but that one only needed
to open the door, and he would disappear
immediately.
But his father was not in the mood to observe such
niceties. “Ah!” he yelled as soon as he entered, with a
tone as if he were at once angry and pleased. Gregor
pulled his head back from the door and raised it in the
direction of his father. He had not really pictured his
father as he now stood there. Of course, what with his
new style of creeping all around, he had in the past
while neglected to pay attention to what was going on
in the rest of the apartment, as he had done before,
and really should have grasped the fact that he would
encounter different conditions. And yet, and yet, was
that still his father? Was that the same man who had
lain exhausted and buried in bed in earlier days when
Gregor was setting out on a business trip, who had
received him on the evenings of his return in a
sleeping gown and arm chair, totally incapable of
standing up, who had only lifted his arm as a sign of
happiness, and who in their rare strolls together a few
Sundays a year and on the most important holidays
made his way slowly forwards between Gregor and
his mother—who themselves moved slowly—always
a bit more slowly than them, bundled up in his old
coat, working hard to move forwards and always
setting down his walking stick carefully, and who,
when he had wanted to say something, almost always
stood still and gathered his entourage around him?
But now he was standing up really straight, dressed
in a tight-fitting blue uniform with gold buttons, like
the ones servants wear in a banking company. Above
the high stiff collar of his jacket his firm double chin
stuck out prominently, beneath his bushy eyebrows
the glance of his black eyes was fresh and alert, and
his usually dishevelled white hair was combed down
into a shining and carefully exact parting. He threw
his cap, on which a gold monogram, probably the
symbol of a bank, was affixed, in an arc across the
entire room onto the sofa and, thrusting back the
edges of the long coat of his uniform, with his hands
in his trouser pockets and a grim face, moved right up
to Gregor. He really did not know what he had in
mind, but he raised his foot uncommonly high
anyway, and Gregor was astonished at the gigantic
size of the sole of his boot. However, he did not
linger on that point, for he had known even from the
first day of his new life that, as far as he was
concerned, his father considered the only appropriate
response to be the greatest force. And so he scurried
away from his father, stopped when his father
remained standing, and scampered forward again
when his father merely stirred. In this way they made
their way around the room repeatedly, without
anything decisive taking place. In fact, because of the
slow pace, it did not look like a chase. So Gregor
remained on the floor for the time being, especially
since he was afraid that his father could interpret a
flight up onto the wall or the ceiling as an act of real
malice. At any event, Gregor had to tell himself that
he could not keep up this running around for a long
time, because whenever his father took a single step,
he had to go through a large number of movements.
Already he was starting to feel a shortage of breath,
just as in his earlier days when his lungs had been
quite unreliable. As he now staggered around in this
way in order to gather all his energies for running,
hardly keeping his eyes open and feeling so listless
that he had no notion at all of any escape other than
by running and had almost already forgotten that the
walls were available to him, although here they were
obstructed by carefully carved furniture full of sharp
points and spikes, at that moment something or other
thrown casually flew close by and rolled in front of
him. It was an apple. Immediately a second one flew
after it. Gregor stood still in fright. Further running
away was useless, for his father had decided to
bombard him. From the fruit bowl on the sideboard
his father had filled his pockets, and now, without for
the moment taking accurate aim, he was throwing
apple after apple. These small red apples rolled
around on the floor, as if electrified, and collided
with each other. A weakly thrown apple grazed
Gregor’s back but skidded off harmlessly. However,
another thrown immediately after that one drove into
Gregor’s back really hard. Gregor wanted to drag
himself off, as if he could make the unexpected and
incredible pain go away if he changed his position.
But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay
stretched out completely confused in all his senses.
Only with his final glance did he notice how the door
of his room was pulled open and how, right in front
of his screaming sister, his mother ran out in her
underbodice, for his sister had loosened her clothing
in order to give her some freedom to breathe in her
fainting spell, and how his mother then ran up to his
father—on the way her loosened petticoats slipped
toward the floor one after the other—and how,
tripping over them, she hurled herself onto his father
and, throwing her arms around him, in complete
205
union with him—but at this moment Gregor’s powers
of sight gave way—as her hands reached around his
father’s neck, and she begged him to spare Gregor’s
life.
III
Gregor’s serious wound, from which he suffered for
over a month —since no one ventured to remove the
apple, it remained in his flesh as a visible reminder—
seemed by itself to have reminded the father that, in
spite of Gregor’s present unhappy and hateful
appearance, he was a member of the family and
should not be treated as an enemy, but that it was, on
the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress
one’s aversion and to endure—nothing else, just
endure.
And if through his wound Gregor had now also
apparently lost for good his ability to move and for
the time being needed many, many minutes to crawl
across his room, like an aged invalid—so far as
creeping up high was concerned, that was
unimaginable—nevertheless, for this worsening of
his condition, in his view he did get completely
satisfactory compensation, because every day
towards evening the door to the living room, which
he was in the habit of keeping a sharp eye on even
one or two hours beforehand, was opened, so that he,
lying down in the darkness of his room, invisible
from the living room, could see the entire family at
the illuminated table and listen to their conversation,
to a certain extent with their common permission, a
situation quite different from what had happened
before.
Of course, it was no longer the animated social
interaction of former times, which in small hotel
rooms Gregor had always thought about with a
certain longing, when, tired out, he had had to throw
himself into the damp bedclothes. For the most part
what went on now was only very quiet. After the
evening meal, the father soon fell asleep in his arm
chair. The mother and sister warned each other to be
quiet. Bent far over the light, the mother sewed fine
undergarments for a fashion shop. The sister, who
had taken on a job as a salesgirl, in the evening
studied stenography and French, so as perhaps to
obtain a better position later on. Sometimes the father
woke up and, as if he was quite ignorant that he had
been asleep, said to the mother “How long you have
been sewing again today!” and went right back to
sleep, while the mother and the sister smiled tiredly
to each other.
With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take
off his servant’s uniform even at home, and while his
sleeping gown hung unused on the coat hook, the
father dozed completely dressed in his place, as if he
was always ready for his responsibility and even here
was waiting for the voice of his superior. As a result,
in spite of all the care from the mother and sister, his
uniform, which even at the start was not new, grew
dirty, and Gregor looked, often for the entire evening,
at this clothing, with stains all over it and with its
gold buttons always polished, in which the old man,
although very uncomfortable, nonetheless was
sleeping peacefully.
As soon as the clock struck ten, the mother tried
gently encouraging the father to wake up and then
persuading him to go to bed, on the ground that he
could not get a proper sleep here and that the father,
who had to report for service at six o’clock, really
needed a good sleep. But in his stubbornness, which
had gripped him since he had become a servant, he
always insisted on staying even longer by the table,
although he regularly fell asleep and then could be
prevailed upon only with the greatest difficulty to
trade his chair for the bed. No matter how much the
mother and sister might at that point work on him
with small admonitions, for a quarter of an hour he
would remain shaking his head slowly, his eyes
closed, without standing up. The mother would pull
him by the sleeve and speak flattering words into his
ear; the sister would leave her work to help her
mother, but that would not have the desired effect on
the father. He would merely settle himself even more
deeply into his arm chair. Only when the two women
grabbed him under the armpits would he throw his
eyes open, look back and forth at the mother and
sister, and habitually say “This is a life. This is the
peace and quiet of my old age.” And propped up by
both women, he would heave himself up elaborately,
as if for him it was the greatest trouble, allow himself
to be led to the door by the women, wave them away
there, and proceed on his own from that point, while
the mother quickly threw down her sewing
implements and the sister her pen in order to run after
the father and help him some more.
In this overworked and exhausted family who had
time to worry any longer about Gregor more than was
absolutely necessary? The household was constantly
getting smaller. The servant girl was now let go. A
huge bony cleaning woman with white hair flying all
over her head came in the morning and evening to do
the heaviest work. The mother took care of
everything else, in addition to her considerable
sewing work. It even happened that various pieces of
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family jewellery, which previously the mother and
sister had been overjoyed to wear on social and
festive occasions, were sold, as Gregor found out in
the evening from the general discussion of the prices
they had fetched. But the greatest complaint was
always that they could not leave this apartment,
which was much too big for their present means,
since it was impossible to imagine how Gregor might
be moved. But Gregor fully recognized that it was
not just consideration for him which was preventing a
move, for he could have been transported easily in a
suitable box with a few air holes. The main thing
holding the family back from a change in living
quarters was far more their complete hopelessness
and the idea that they had been struck by a
misfortune like no one else in their entire circle of
relatives and acquaintances. What the world demands
of poor people they now carried out to an extreme
degree. The father bought breakfast to the petty
officials at the bank, the mother sacrificed herself for
the undergarments of strangers, the sister behind her
desk was at the beck and call of customers, but the
family’s energies did not extend any further. And the
wound in his back began to pain Gregor all over
again, when his mother and sister, after they had
escorted the father to bed, now came back, let their
work lie, moved close together, and sat cheek to
cheek and when his mother would now say, pointing
to Gregor’s room, “Close the door, Grete,” and when
Gregor was again in the darkness, while close by the
women mingled their tears or, quite dry eyed, stared
at the table.
Gregor spent his nights and days with hardly any
sleep. Sometimes he thought that the next time the
door opened he would take over the family
arrangements just as he had earlier. In his
imagination appeared again, after a long time, his
boss and the manager, the chief clerk and the
apprentices, the excessively spineless custodian, two
or three friends from other businesses, a
chambermaid from a hotel in the provinces, a loving,
fleeting memory, a female cashier from a hat shop,
whom he had seriously but too slowly courted—they
all appeared mixed in with strangers or people he had
already forgotten, but instead of helping him and his
family, they were all unapproachable, and he was
happy to see them disappear. But then again he was
in no mood to worry about his family. He was filled
with sheer anger over the wretched care he was
getting, even though he could not imagine anything
which he might have an appetite for. Still, he made
plans about how he could get into the larder to take
there what he at all accounts deserved, even if he was
not hungry. Without thinking any more about how
they might be able to give Gregor special pleasure,
the sister very quickly kicked some food or other,
whatever she felt like, into his room in the morning
and at noon, before she ran off to her shop. And in
the evening, quite indifferent to whether the food had
perhaps only been tasted or, what happened most
frequently, remained entirely undisturbed, she
whisked it out with one sweep of her broom. The task
of cleaning his room, which she now always carried
out in the evening, could not have been done any
more quickly. Streaks of dirt ran along the walls; here
and there lay tangles of dust and garbage. At first,
when his sister arrived, Gregor positioned himself in
a particularly filthy corner in order with this posture
to make something of a protest. But he could well
have stayed there for weeks without his sister’s doing
the job any better. In fact, she perceived the dirt as
much as he did, but she had decided just to let it stay.
In this business, with a touchiness which was quite
new to her and which had generally taken over the
entire family, she kept watch to see that the cleaning
of Gregor’s room remained reserved for her. His
mother had once undertaken a major clean up of his
room, which she had only completed successfully
after using a few buckets of water. But the extensive
dampness made Gregor sick, and he lay spread out,
embittered and immobile, on the couch. However, the
mother’s punishment did not fail to materialize. For
in the evening the sister had hardly observed the
change in Gregor’s room before she ran into the
living room mightily offended and, in spite of her
mother’s hand lifted high in entreaty, broke out in a
fit of crying. Her parents—the father had, of course,
woken up with a start in his armchair—at first looked
at her astonished and helpless, until they started to
get agitated. Turning to his right, the father heaped
reproaches on the mother that she had not left the
cleaning of Gregor’s room to the sister and, turning
to his left, he shouted at the sister that she would no
longer be allowed to clean Gregor’s room ever again,
while the mother tried to pull the father, beside
himself in his excitement, into the bed room. The
sister, shaken by her crying fit, pounded on the table
with her tiny fists, and Gregor hissed at all this, angry
that no one thought about shutting the door and
sparing him the sight of this commotion.
But even when the sister, exhausted from her daily
work, had grown tired of caring for Gregor as she had
before, even then the mother did not have to come at
all in her place. And Gregor did not have to be
neglected. For now the cleaning woman was there.
This old widow, whose bony frame had enabled her
to survive the worst a long life can offer, had no real
horror of Gregor. Without being in the least curious,
she had once accidentally opened Gregor’s door. At
the sight of Gregor, who, totally surprised, began to
207
scamper here and there, although no one was chasing
him, she remained standing with her hands folded
across her stomach staring at him. Since then she did
not fail to open the door furtively a little every
morning and evening and look in on Gregor. At first,
she also called him to her with words which she
probably thought were friendly, like “Come here for
a bit, old dung beetle!” or “Hey, look at the old dung
beetle!” Addressed in such a manner, Gregor made
no answer, but remained motionless in his place, as if
the door had not been opened at all. If only, instead
of allowing this cleaning woman to disturb him
uselessly whenever she felt like it, they had given her
orders to clean up his room every day! Once in the
early morning—a hard downpour, perhaps already a
sign of the coming spring, struck the window
panes—when the cleaning woman started up once
again with her usual conversation, Gregor was so
bitter that he turned towards her, as if for an attack,
although slowly and weakly. But instead of being
afraid of him, the cleaning woman merely lifted up a
chair standing close by the door and, as she stood
there with her mouth wide open, her intention was
clear: she would close her mouth only when the chair
in her hand had been thrown down on Gregor’s back.
“This goes no further, all right?” she asked, as Gregor
turned himself around again, and she placed the chair
calmly back in the corner.
Gregor ate hardly anything any more. Only when he
chanced to move past the food which had been
prepared did he, as a game, take a bit into his mouth,
hold it there for hours, and generally spit it out again.
At first he thought it might be his sadness over the
condition of his room which kept him from eating,
but he very soon became reconciled to the alterations
in his room. People had grown accustomed to discard
in there things which they could not put anywhere
else, and at this point there were many such items,
now that they had rented one room of the apartment
to three lodgers. These solemn gentlemen—all three
had full beards, as Gregor once found out through a
crack in the door—were meticulously intent on
tidiness, not only in their own room but, since they
had now rented a room here, in the entire household,
particularly in the kitchen. They simply did not
tolerate any useless or shoddy stuff. Moreover, for
the most part they had brought with them their own
pieces of furniture. Thus, many items had become
superfluous, and these were not really things one
could sell or things people wanted to throw out. All
these pieces ended up in Gregor’s room, even the box
of ashes and the garbage pail from the kitchen. The
cleaning woman, always in a great hurry, simply
flung anything that was for the moment useless into
Gregor’s room. Fortunately Gregor generally saw
only the relevant object and the hand which held it.
The cleaning woman perhaps was intending, when
time and opportunity allowed, to take the stuff out
again or to throw everything out all at once, but in
fact the things remained lying there, wherever they
had ended up at the first throw, unless Gregor
squirmed his way through the accumulation of junk
and moved it. At first he was forced to do this
because otherwise there was no room for him to
creep around, but later he did it with a growing
pleasure, although after such movements, tired to
death and feeling wretched, he did not budge again
for hours.
Because the lodgers sometimes also took their
evening meal at home in the common living room,
the door to it stayed shut on many evenings. But
Gregor had no trouble at all going without the open
door. Already on many evenings when it was open he
had not availed himself of it, but, without the family
noticing, was stretched out in the darkest corner of
his room. However, on one occasion the cleaning
woman had left the door to the living room slightly
ajar, and it remained open even when the lodgers
came in as evening fell and the lights were put on.
They sat down at the head of the table, where in
earlier days the mother, the father, and Gregor had
eaten, unfolded their serviettes, and picked up their
knives and forks. The mother immediately appeared
in the door with a dish of meat and right behind her
the sister with a dish piled high with potatoes. The
food gave off a lot of steam. The gentlemen lodgers
bent over the plates set before them, as if they wanted
to check them before eating, and in fact the one who
sat in the middle—for the other two he seemed to
serve as the authority—cut off a piece of meat still on
the dish, obviously to establish whether it was
sufficiently tender and whether or not it should be
sent back to the kitchen. He was satisfied, and mother
and sister, who had looked on in suspense, began to
breathe easily and to smile.
The family itself ate in the kitchen. In spite of that,
before the father went into the kitchen, he came into
the living room and with a single bow, cap in hand,
made a tour of the table. The lodgers rose up
collectively and murmured something into their
beards. Then, when they were alone, they ate almost
in complete silence. It seemed odd to Gregor that, out
of all the many different sorts of sounds of eating,
what was always audible was their chewing teeth, as
if by that Gregor should be shown that people needed
their teeth to eat and that nothing could be done even
with the most handsome toothless jawbone. “I really
do have an appetite,” Gregor said to himself
208
sorrowfully, “but not for these things. How these
lodgers stuff themselves, and I am dying of hunger!”
On this very evening the violin sounded from the
kitchen. Gregor did not remember hearing it all
through this period. The lodgers had already ended
their night meal, the middle one had pulled out a
newspaper and had given each of the other two a
page, and they were now leaning back, reading and
smoking. When the violin started playing, they
became attentive, got up, and went on tiptoe to the
hall door, at which they remained standing pressed up
against one another. They must have been audible
from the kitchen, because the father called out,
“Perhaps the gentlemen don’t like the playing? It can
be stopped at once.” “On the contrary,” stated the
lodger in the middle, “might the young woman not
come into us and play in the room here, where it is
really much more comfortable and cheerful?” “Oh,
certainly,” cried the father, as if he were the one
playing the violin. The men stepped back into the
room and waited. Soon the father came with the
music stand, the mother with the sheet music, and the
sister with the violin. The sister calmly prepared
everything for the recital. The parents, who had never
previously rented a room and therefore exaggerated
their politeness to the lodgers, dared not sit on their
own chairs. The father leaned against the door, his
right hand stuck between two buttons of his buttonedup uniform. The mother, however, accepted a chair
offered by one of the lodgers. Since she let the chair
stay where the gentleman had chanced to put it, she
sat to one side in a corner.
The sister began to play. The father and mother, one
on each side, followed attentively the movements of
her hands. Attracted by the playing, Gregor had
ventured to advance a little further forward, and his
head was already in the living room. He scarcely
wondered about the fact that recently he had had so
little consideration for the others. Earlier this
consideration had been something he was proud of.
And for that very reason he would have had at this
moment more reason to hide away, because as a
result of the dust which lay all over his room and
flew around with the slightest movement, he was
totally covered in dirt. On his back and his sides he
carted around with him threads, hair, and remnants of
food. His indifference to everything was much too
great for him to lie on his back and scour himself on
the carpet, as he had done earlier several times a day.
In spite of this condition he had no timidity about
inching forward a bit on the spotless floor of the
living room.
In any case, no one paid him any attention. The
family was all caught up in the violin playing. The
lodgers, by contrast, who for the moment had placed
themselves, hands in their trouser pockets, behind the
music stand much too close to the sister, so that they
could all see the sheet music, something that must
certainly have bothered the sister, soon drew back to
the window conversing in low voices with bowed
heads, where they then remained, anxiously observed
by the father. It now seemed really clear that, having
assumed they were to hear a beautiful or entertaining
violin recital, they were disappointed; they had had
enough of the entire performance and were allowing
their peace and quiet to be disturbed only out of
politeness. In particular, the way in which they all
blew the smoke from their cigars out of their noses
and mouths up into the air led one to conclude that
they were very irritated. And yet his sister was
playing so beautifully. Her face was turned to the
side, her eyes following the score intently and sadly.
Gregor crept forward still a little further, keeping his
head close against the floor in order to be able to
catch her gaze if possible. Was he an animal that
music so captivated him? For him it was as if the way
to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing
itself. He was determined to press forward right up to
his sister, to tug at her dress, and to indicate to her in
this way that she might still come with her violin into
his room, because here no one valued the recital as he
wanted to value it. He did not wish to let her go from
his room any more, at least not so long as he lived.
His frightening appearance would for the first time
become useful for him. He wanted to be at all the
doors of his room simultaneously and snarl back at
the attackers. However, his sister should not be
compelled but would remain with him voluntarily.
She would sit next to him on the sofa, bend down her
ear to him, and he would then confide in her that he
firmly intended to send her to the Conservatory and
that, if his misfortune had not arrived in the interim,
he would have declared all this last Christmas—had
Christmas really already come and gone?—and
would have brooked no argument. After this
explanation his sister would break out in tears of
emotion, and Gregor would lift himself up to her
armpit and kiss her throat, which she, from the time
she had been going to work, had left exposed without
a band or a collar.
“Mr. Samsa!” called out the middle lodger to the
father and, without uttering a further word, pointed
his index finger at Gregor as he was moving slowly
forward. The violin fell silent. The middle lodger
smiled, first shaking his head at his friends, and then
looked down at Gregor once more. Rather than
driving Gregor back, the father seemed to consider it
209
more important for the time being to calm down the
lodgers, although they were not at all upset and
Gregor seemed to entertain them more than the violin
recital. The father hurried over to them and with
outstretched arms tried to push them into their own
room and at the same time to block their view of
Gregor with his own body. At this point they became
really somewhat irritated, although one no longer
knew whether that was because of the father’s
behaviour or because of the knowledge they had just
acquired that they had, without being aware of it, a
neighbour like Gregor. They demanded explanations
from his father, raised their arms to make their points,
tugged agitatedly at their beards, and moved back
towards their room quite slowly. In the meantime, the
isolation which had suddenly fallen upon his sister
after the unexpected breaking off of the recital had
overwhelmed her. She had held onto the violin and
bow in her limp hands for a little while and had
continued to look at the sheet music as if she was still
playing. All at once she pulled herself together,
placed the instrument in her mother’s lap—the
mother was still sitting in her chair having trouble
breathing, for her lungs were labouring hard—and
had run into the next room, which the lodgers,
pressured by the father, were already approaching
more rapidly. One could observe how under the
sister’s practised hands the covers and pillows on the
beds were thrown high and then rearranged. Even
before the lodgers had reached the room, she had
finished fixing the beds and was slipping out. The
father seemed once again so gripped by his
stubbornness that he forgot about the respect which,
after all, he must show his lodgers. He pressed on and
on, until right in the door of the room the middle
gentleman stamped loudly with his foot and thus
brought the father to a standstill. “I hereby declare,”
the middle lodger said, raising his hand and casting
his glance both on the mother and the sister, “that
considering the disgraceful conditions prevailing in
this apartment and family”—with this he spat
decisively on the floor—“I immediately cancel my
room. I will, of course, pay nothing at all for the days
which I have lived here; on the contrary, I shall think
about whether or not I will initiate some sort of
action against you, something which—believe me—
will be very easy to establish.” He fell silent and
looked directly in front of him, as if he was waiting
for something. In fact, his two friends immediately
joined in with their opinions, “We also give
immediate notice.” At that he seized the door handle
and with a bang slammed the door shut.
The father groped his way tottering to his chair and
let himself fall in it. It looked as if he was stretching
out for his usual evening snooze, but the heavy
nodding of his head, which appeared as if it had no
support, showed that he was not sleeping at all.
Gregor had lain motionless the entire time in the spot
where the lodgers had caught him. Disappointment
with the collapse of his plan and perhaps also
weakness brought on by his severe hunger made it
impossible for him to move. He was afraid and
reasonably certain that they might launch a combined
attack against him at any moment, and he waited. He
was not even startled when the violin fell from the
mother’s lap, out from under her trembling fingers,
and gave off a reverberating tone.
“My dear parents,” said the sister banging her hand
on the table by way of an introduction, “things cannot
go on any longer in this way. Maybe if you don’t
understand that, well, I do. I will not utter my
brother’s name in front of this monster, and thus I say
only that we must try to get rid of it. We have tried
what is humanly possible to take care of it and to be
patient. I believe that no one can criticize us in the
slightest.”
“She is right in a thousand ways,” said the father to
himself. The mother, who was still incapable of
breathing properly, began to cough numbly with her
hand held up over her mouth and a manic expression
in her eyes.
The sister hurried over to her mother and held her
forehead. The sister’s words seemed to have led the
father to certain reflections. He sat upright, played
with his service hat among the plates, which still lay
on the table from the lodgers’ evening meal, and
looked now and then at the motionless Gregor.
“We must try to get rid of it,” the sister now said
decisively to the father, for the mother, in her
coughing fit, was not listening to anything. “It is
killing you both. I see it coming. When people have
to work as hard as we all do, they cannot also tolerate
this endless torment at home. I just can’t go on any
more.” And she broke out into such a crying fit that
her tears flowed out down onto her mother’s face.
She wiped them off her mother with mechanical
motions of her hands.
“Child,” said the father sympathetically and with
obvious appreciation, “then what should we do?”
The sister only shrugged her shoulders as a sign of
the perplexity which, in contrast to her previous
confidence, had now come over her while she was
crying.
210
“If he understood us,” said the father in a semiquestioning tone. The sister, in the midst of her
sobbing, shook her hand energetically as a sign that
there was no point thinking of that.
“If he understood us,” repeated the father and by
shutting his eyes he absorbed the sister’s conviction
of the impossibility of this point, “then perhaps some
compromise would be possible with him. But as it is.
. .”
“It has to go,” cried the sister. “That is the only way,
father. You must try to get rid of the idea that this is
Gregor. The fact that we have believed this for so
long, that is truly our real misfortune. But how can it
be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago
realized that a communal life among human beings is
not possible with such a creature and would have
gone away voluntarily. Then we would not have a
brother, but we could go on living and honour his
memory. But this animal plagues us. It drives away
the lodgers, will obviously take over the entire
apartment, and leave us to spend the night in the lane.
Just look, father,” she suddenly cried out, “he’s
already starting up again.” With a fright which was
totally incomprehensible to Gregor, the sister even
left the mother, literally pushed herself away from
her chair, as if she would sooner sacrifice her mother
than remain in Gregor’s vicinity, and rushed behind
her father who, excited merely by her behaviour, also
stood up and half raised his arms in front of the sister
as though to protect her.
But Gregor did not have any notion of wishing to
create problems for anyone and certainly not for his
sister. He had just started to turn himself around in
order to creep back into his room, quite a startling
sight, since, as a result of his suffering condition, he
had to guide himself through the difficulty of turning
around with his head, in this process lifting and
striking it against the floor several times. He paused
and looked around. His good intentions seemed to
have been recognized. The fright had lasted only for
a moment. Now they looked at him in silence and
sorrow. His mother lay in her chair, with her legs
stretched out and pressed together, her eyes almost
shut from weariness. The father and sister sat next to
one another. The sister had put her hands around the
father’s neck.
“Now perhaps I can actually turn myself around,”
thought Gregor and began the task again. He couldn’t
stop puffing at the effort and had to rest now and
then. Besides, no one was urging him on. It was all
left to him on his own. When he had completed
turning around, he immediately began to wander
straight back. He was astonished at the great distance
which separated him from his room and did not
understand in the least how in his weakness he had
covered the same distance a short time before, almost
without noticing it. Always intent only on creeping
along quickly, he hardly paid any attention to the fact
that no word or cry from his family interrupted him.
Only when he was already in the doorway did he turn
his head, not completely, because he felt his neck
growing stiff. At any rate, he still saw that behind
him nothing had changed. Only the sister was
standing up. His last glimpse brushed over the
mother, who was now completely asleep.
He was only just inside his room when the door was
pushed shut very quickly, bolted fast, and barred.
Gregor was startled by the sudden commotion behind
him, so much so that his little limbs bent double
under him. It was his sister who had been in such a
hurry. She was already standing up, had waited, and
then sprung forward nimbly. Gregor had not heard
anything of her approach. She cried out “Finally!” to
her parents, as she turned the key in the lock.
“What now?” Gregor asked himself and looked
around him in the darkness. He soon made the
discovery that he could no longer move at all. He was
not surprised at that. On the contrary, it struck him as
unnatural that up to this point he had really been able
up to move around with these thin little legs. Besides
he felt relatively content. True, he had pains
throughout his entire body, but it seemed to him that
they were gradually becoming weaker and weaker
and would finally go away completely. The rotten
apple in his back and the inflamed surrounding area,
entirely covered with white dust, he hardly noticed.
He remembered his family with deep feelings of love.
In this business, his own thought that he had to
disappear was, if possible, even more decisive than
his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and
peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three
in the morning. In front of the window he witnessed
the beginning of the outside growing generally
lighter. Then without willing it, his head sank all the
way down, and from his nostrils his last breath
flowed weakly out.
Early in the morning the cleaning woman came. In
her sheer energy and haste she banged all the doors—
in precisely the way people had already frequently
asked her to avoid—so much so that once she arrived
a quiet sleep was no longer possible anywhere in the
entire apartment. In her customarily brief visit to
Gregor she at first found nothing special. She thought
211
he lay so immobile there on purpose and was playing
the offended party. She gave him credit for as
complete an understanding as possible. Since she
happened to be holding the long broom in her hand,
she tried to tickle Gregor with it from the door. When
that was quite unsuccessful, she became irritated and
poked Gregor a little, and only when she had shoved
him from his place without any resistance did she
become attentive. When she quickly realized the true
state of affairs, her eyes grew large and she whistled
to herself. However, she didn’t restrain herself for
long. She pulled open the door of the bedroom and
yelled in a loud voice into the darkness, “Come and
look. It’s kicked the bucket. It’s lying there. It’s
completely snuffed it!”
The Samsas sat upright in their marriage bed and had
to get over their fright at the cleaning woman before
they managed to grasp her message. But then Mr. and
Mrs. Samsa climbed very quickly out of bed, one on
either side. Mr. Samsa threw the bedspread over his
shoulders, Mrs. Samsa came out only in her
nightshirt, and like this they stepped into Gregor’s
room. Meanwhile, the door of the living room, in
which Grete had slept since the lodgers had arrived
on the scene, had also opened. She was fully clothed,
as if she had not slept at all; her white face also
seemed to indicate that. “Dead?” said Mrs. Samsa
and looked questioningly at the cleaning woman,
although she could have checked everything on her
own and it was clear even without a check. “I should
say so,” said the cleaning woman and, by way of
proof, poked Gregor’s body with the broom a
considerable distance more to the side. Mrs. Samsa
made a movement, as if she wished to restrain the
broom, but did not do it. “Well,” said Mr. Samsa,
“now we can give thanks to God.” He crossed
himself, and the three women followed his example.
Grete, who did not take her eyes off the corpse, said,
“Just look how thin he was. He has eaten nothing for
such a long time. The meals which came in here
came out again exactly the same.” In fact, Gregor’s
body was completely flat and dry. That was apparent
really for the first time, now that he was no longer
raised on his small limbs and nothing else distracted
one from looking.
“Grete, come into us for a moment,” said Mrs. Samsa
with a melancholy smile, and Grete went, not without
looking back at the corpse, behind her parents into
the bed room. The cleaning woman shut the door and
opened the window wide. In spite of the early
morning, the fresh air was partly tinged with warmth.
It was already almost the end of March.
The three lodgers stepped out of their room and
looked around for their breakfast, astonished that
they had been forgotten. The middle one of the
gentlemen asked the cleaning woman grumpily
“Where is the breakfast?” However, she laid her
finger to her lips and then quickly and silently
indicated to the lodgers that they could come into
Gregor’s room. So they came and stood in the room,
which was already quite bright, around Gregor’s
corpse, their hands in the pockets of their somewhat
worn jackets.
Then the door of the bedroom opened, and Mr.
Samsa appeared in his uniform, with his wife on one
arm and his daughter on the other. All were a little
tear stained. Now and then Grete pressed her face
into her father’s arm.
“Get out of my apartment immediately,” said Mr.
Samsa and pointed to the door, without letting go of
the women. “What do you mean?” said the middle
lodger, somewhat dismayed and with a sugary smile.
The two others kept their hands behind them and
constantly rubbed them against each other, as if in
joyful anticipation of a great squabble which must
end up in their favour. “I mean exactly what I say,”
replied Mr. Samsa and went directly up to the lodger
with his two female companions. The latter at first
stood there motionless and looked at the floor, as if
matters were arranging themselves in a new way in
his head. “All right, then we’ll go,” he said and
looked up at Mr. Samsa as if, suddenly overcome by
humility, he was even asking fresh permission for
this decision. Mr. Samsa merely nodded briefly and
repeatedly to him with his eyes open wide. Following
that, with long strides the lodger actually went out
immediately into the hall. His two friends had already
been listening for a while with their hands quite still,
and now they hopped smartly after him, as if afraid
that Mr. Samsa could step into the hall ahead of them
and disturb their reunion with their leader. In the hall
all three of them took their hats from the coat rack,
pulled their canes from the umbrella stand, bowed
silently, and left the apartment. In what turned out to
be an entirely groundless mistrust, Mr. Samsa
stepped with the two women out onto the landing,
leaned against the railing, and looked over as the
three lodgers slowly but steadily made their way
down the long staircase, disappeared on each floor in
a certain turn of the stairwell, and in a few seconds
reappeared again. The further down they went, the
more the Samsa family lost interest in them, and
when a butcher with a tray on his head came up to
meet them and then with a proud bearing ascended
the stairs high above them, Mr. Samsa, together with
212
the women, soon left the bannister, and they all
returned, as if relieved, back into their apartment.
They decided to pass that day resting and going for a
stroll. Not only had they earned this break from work,
but there was no question that they really needed it.
And so they sat down at the table and wrote three
letters of apology: Mr. Samsa to his supervisor, Mrs.
Samsa to her client, and Grete to her proprietor.
During the writing the cleaning woman came in to
say that she was going off, for her morning work was
finished. The three people writing at first merely
nodded, without glancing up. Only when the cleaning
woman was still unwilling to depart, did they look up
annoyed. “Well?” asked Mr. Samsa. The cleaning
woman stood smiling in the doorway, as if she had a
great stroke of luck to report to the family but would
only do it if she was questioned thoroughly. The
almost upright small ostrich feather in her hat, which
had irritated Mr. Samsa during her entire service with
them, swayed lightly in all directions. “All right then,
what do you really want?” asked Mrs. Samsa, whom
the cleaning lady respected more than the others.
“Well,” answered the cleaning woman, smiling so
happily she couldn’t go on speaking right away, “you
mustn’t worry about throwing out that rubbish from
the next room. It’s all taken care of.” Mrs. Samsa and
Grete bent down to their letters, as though they
wanted to go on writing. Mr. Samsa, who noticed that
the cleaning woman now wanted to start describing
everything in detail, decisively prevented her with an
outstretched hand. But since she was not allowed to
explain, she remembered the great hurry she was in,
and called out, clearly insulted, “Bye bye, everyone,”
then turned around furiously and left the apartment
with a fearful slamming of the door.
totally engulfed by the warm sun. Leaning back
comfortably in their seats, they talked to each other
about future prospects, and they discovered that on
closer observation these were not at all bad, for the
three of them had employment, about which they had
not really questioned each other at all, which was
extremely favourable and with especially promising
future prospects. The greatest improvement in their
situation at this point, of course, had to come from a
change of dwelling. Now they wanted to rent a
smaller and cheaper apartment but better situated and
generally more practical than the present one, which
Gregor had chosen. While they amused themselves in
this way, it struck Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the
same moment, as they looked at their daughter, who
was getting more animated all the time, how she had
blossomed recently, in spite of all the troubles which
had made her cheeks pale, into a beautiful and
voluptuous young woman. Growing more silent and
almost unconsciously understanding each other in
their glances, they thought that the time was now at
hand to seek out a good honest man for her. And it
was something of a confirmation of their new dreams
and good intentions when at the end of their journey
their daughter stood up first and stretched her young
body.
___________________________________________
The Rocking Horse Winner DH Lawrence
“This evening she’ll be given notice,” said Mr.
Samsa, but he got no answer from either his wife or
from his daughter, because the cleaning woman
seemed to have once again upset the tranquillity they
had just attained. The women got up, went to the
window, and remained there, with their arms about
each other. Mr. Samsa turned around in his chair in
their direction and observed them quietly for a while.
Then he called out, “All right, come here then. Let’s
finally get rid of old things. And have a little
consideration for me.” The women attended to him at
once. They rushed to him, caressed him, and quickly
ended their letters.
There was a woman who was beautiful, who started
with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She
married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had
bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon
her, and she could not love them. They looked at her
coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And
hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in
herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she
never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were
present, she always felt the centre of her heart go
hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all
the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she
loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at
the centre of her heart was a hard little place that
could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody
else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She
adores her children." Only she herself, and her
children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it
in each other's eyes.
Then all three left the apartment together, something
they had not done for months now, and took the
electric tram into the open air outside the city. The
car in which they were sitting by themselves was
There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a
pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet
servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in
the neighbourhood.
213
Although they lived in style, they felt always an
anxiety in the house. There was never enough money.
The mother had a small income, and the father had a
small income, but not nearly enough for the social
position which they had to keep up. The father went
into town to some office. But though he had good
prospects, these prospects never materialised. There
was always the grinding sense of the shortage of
money, though the style was always kept up.
At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make
something." But she did not know where to begin.
She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the
other, but could not find anything successful. The
failure made deep lines come into her face. Her
children were growing up, they would have to go to
school. There must be more money, there must be
more money. The father, who was always very
handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he
never would be able to do anything worth doing. And
the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not
succeed any better, and her tastes were just as
expensive.
And so the house came to be haunted by the
unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There
must be more money! The children could hear it all
the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at
Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys
filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern
rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice
would start whispering: "There must be more money!
There must be more money!" And the children would
stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look
into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard.
And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that
they too had heard. "There must be more money!
There must be more money!"
It came whispering from the springs of the stillswaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending
his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll,
sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could
hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all
the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish
puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he
was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other
reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over
the house: "There must be more money!"
"Mother," said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we
keep a car of our own? Why do we always use
uncle's, or else a taxi?"
"Because we're the poor members of the family," said
the mother.
"But why are we, mother?"
"Well - I suppose," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's
because your father has no luck."
The boy was silent for some time.
"Is luck money, mother?" he asked, rather timidly.
"No, Paul. Not quite. It's what causes you to have
money."
"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle
Oscar said filthy lucker, it meant money."
"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother.
"But it's lucre, not luck."
"Oh!" said the boy. "Then what is luck, mother?"
"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky
you have money. That's why it's better to be born
lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your
money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more
money."
"Oh! Will you? And is father not lucky?"
"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.
The boy watched her with unsure eyes.
"Why?" he asked.
"I don't know. Nobody ever knows why one person is
lucky and another unlucky."
"Don't they? Nobody at all? Does nobody know?"
"Perhaps God. But He never tells."
Yet nobody ever said it aloud. The whisper was
everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no
one ever says: "We are breathing!" in spite of the fact
that breath is coming and going all the time.
"He ought to, then. And aren't you lucky either,
mother?"
"I can't be, it I married an unlucky husband."
214
"But by yourself, aren't you?"
"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I
am very unlucky indeed."
"Why?"
"Well - never mind! Perhaps I'm not really," she said.
The child looked at her to see if she meant it. But he
saw, by the lines of her mouth, that she was only
trying to hide something from him.
"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky
person."
"Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh.
He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had
said it.
"God told me," he asserted, brazening it out.
"I hope He did, dear!", she said, again with a laugh,
but rather bitter.
"He did, mother!"
"Excellent!" said the mother, using one of her
husband's exclamations.
The boy saw she did not believe him; or rather, that
she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered
him somewhere, and made him want to compel her
attention.
He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way,
seeking for the clue to 'luck'. Absorbed, taking no
heed of other people, he went about with a sort of
stealth, seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he
wanted it, he wanted it. When the two girls were
playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big
rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a
frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily.
Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of
the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them.
The little girls dared not speak to him.
When he had ridden to the end of his mad little
journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his
rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face.
Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide
and glassy-bright.
"Now!" he would silently command the snorting
steed. "Now take me to where there is luck! Now take
me!"
And he would slash the horse on the neck with the
little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for. He knew
the horse could take him to where there was luck, if
only he forced it. So he would mount again and start
on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there.
"You'll break your horse, Paul!" said the nurse.
"He's always riding like that! I wish he'd leave off!"
said his elder sister Joan.
But he only glared down on them in silence. Nurse
gave him up. She could make nothing of him.
Anyhow, he was growing beyond her.
One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in
when he was on one of his furious rides. He did not
speak to them.
"Hallo, you young jockey! Riding a winner?" said his
uncle.
"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse?
You're not a very little boy any longer, you know,"
said his mother.
But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather
close-set eyes. He would speak to nobody when he
was in full tilt. His mother watched him with an
anxious expression on her face.
At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the
mechanical gallop and slid down.
"Well, I got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue
eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling
apart.
"Where did you get to?" asked his mother.
"Where I wanted to go," he flared back at her.
"That's right, son!" said Uncle Oscar. "Don't you stop
till you get there. What's the horse's name?"
"He doesn't have a name," said the boy.
"Gets on without all right?" asked the uncle.
215
"Well, he has different names. He was called
Sansovino last week."
"Honour bright, son!" said the uncle.
"Well, then, Daffodil."
"Sansovino, eh? Won the Ascot. How did you know
this name?"
"Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?"
"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett,"
said Joan.
"I only know the winner," said the boy. "That's
Daffodil."
The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew
was posted with all the racing news. Bassett, the
young gardener, who had been wounded in the left
foot in the war and had got his present job through
Oscar Cresswell, whose batman he had been, was a
perfect blade of the 'turf'. He lived in the racing
events, and the small boy lived with him.
"Daffodil, eh?"
Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.
"Yes, son?"
"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more
than tell him, sir," said Bassett, his face terribly
serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.
"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised
Bassett."
"And does he ever put anything on a horse he
fancies?"
"Well - I don't want to give him away - he's a young
sport, a fine sport, sir. Would you mind asking him
himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps
he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't
mind.
Bassett was serious as a church.
The uncle went back to his nephew and took him off
for a ride in the car.
"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a
horse?" the uncle asked.
The boy watched the handsome man closely.
"Why, do you think I oughtn't to?" he parried.
"Not a bit of it! I thought perhaps you might give me
a tip for the Lincoln."
The car sped on into the country, going down to
Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire.
There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse
comparatively.
"Uncle!"
"Bassett be damned, old man! What's he got to do
with it?"
"We're partners. We've been partners from the first.
Uncle, he lent me my first five shillings, which I lost.
I promised him, honour bright, it was only between
me and him; only you gave me that ten-shilling note I
started winning with, so I thought you were lucky.
You won't let it go any further, will you?"
The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue
eyes, set rather close together. The uncle stirred and
laughed uneasily.
"Right you are, son! I'll keep your tip private. How
much are you putting on him?"
"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that
in reserve."
The uncle thought it a good joke.
"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you
young romancer? What are you betting, then?"
"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely.
"But it's between you and me, Uncle Oscar! Honour
bright?"
"Honour bright?" said the nephew.
216
"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat
Gould," he said, laughing. "But where's your three
hundred?"
His uncle studied him for some moments.
"Look here, son!" he said. "You're not serious about
Bassett and that fifteen hundred, are you?"
"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partners."
"You are, are you! And what is Bassett putting on
Daffodil?"
"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect. Perhaps
he'll go a hundred and fifty."
"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.
"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his
uncle. "Bassett keeps a bigger reserve than I do."
Between wonder and amusement Uncle Oscar was
silent. He pursued the matter no further, but he
determined to take his nephew with him to the
Lincoln races.
"Yes, I am. But it's between you and me, uncle.
Honour bright?"
"Honour bright all right, son! But I must talk to
Bassett."
"If you'd like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and
me, we could all be partners. Only, you'd have to
promise, honour bright, uncle, not to let it go beyond
us three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be
lucky, because it was your ten shillings I started
winning with ..."
Uncle Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into
Richmond Park for an afternoon, and there they
talked.
"I should if it was my own fiver," said the child.
"It's like this, you see, sir," Bassett said. "Master Paul
would get me talking about racing events, spinning
yarns, you know, sir. And he was always keen on
knowing if I'd made or if I'd lost. It's about a year
since, now, that I put five shillings on Blush of Dawn
for him: and we lost. Then the luck turned, with that
ten shillings he had from you: that we put on
Singhalese. And since that time, it's been pretty
steady, all things considering. What do you say,
Master Paul?"
"Good! Good! Right you are! A fiver for me and a
fiver for you on Daffodil."
"We're all right when we're sure," said Paul. "It's
when we're not quite sure that we go down."
The child had never been to a race-meeting before,
and his eyes were blue fire. He pursed his mouth tight
and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his
money on Lancelot. Wild with excitement, he flayed
his arms up and down, yelling "Lancelot!, Lancelot!"
in his French accent.
"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.
"Now, son," he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza,
and I'll put five on for you on any horse you fancy.
What's your pick?"
"Daffodil, uncle."
"No, not the fiver on Daffodil!"
Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third.
The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was
curiously serene. His uncle brought him four fivepound notes, four to one.
"What am I to do with these?" he cried, waving them
before the boys eyes.
"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy. "I
expect I have fifteen hundred now; and twenty in
reserve; and this twenty."
"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.
"It's Master Paul, sir," said Bassett in a secret,
religious voice. "It's as if he had it from heaven. Like
Daffodil, now, for the Lincoln. That was as sure as
eggs."
"Did you put anything on Daffodil?" asked Oscar
Cresswell.
"Yes, sir, I made my bit."
"And my nephew?"
Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at Paul.
217
"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Bassett? I told uncle
I was putting three hundred on Daffodil."
"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.
"But where's the money?" asked the uncle.
"I keep it safe locked up, sir. Master Paul he can have
it any minute he likes to ask for it."
"What, fifteen hundred pounds?"
"And twenty! And forty, that is, with the twenty he
made on the course."
"It's amazing!" said the uncle.
"If Master Paul offers you to be partners, sir, I would,
if I were you: if you'll excuse me," said Bassett.
Oscar Cresswell thought about it.
"I'll see the money," he said.
But he became a partner. And when the Leger was
coming on Paul was 'sure' about Lively Spark, which
was a quite inconsiderable horse. The boy insisted on
putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five
hundred, and Oscar Cresswell two hundred. Lively
Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to
one against him. Paul had made ten thousand.
"You see," he said. "I was absolutely sure of him."
Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.
"Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes
me nervous."
"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a
long time."
"But what are you going to do with your money?"
asked the uncle.
"Of course," said the boy, "I started it for mother. She
said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I
thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."
They drove home again, and, sure enough, Bassett
came round to the garden-house with fifteen hundred
pounds in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left
with Joe Glee, in the Turf Commission deposit.
"What might stop whispering?"
"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm sure! Then we
go strong, for all we're worth, don't we, Bassett?"
"What does it whisper?"
"We do that, Master Paul."
"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.
"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure, like about
Daffodil," said the boy; "and sometimes I have an
idea; and sometimes I haven't even an idea, have I,
Bassett? Then we're careful, because we mostly go
down."
"You do, do you! And when you're sure, like about
Daffodil, what makes you sure, sonny?"
"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily. "I'm
sure, you know, uncle; that's all."
"It's as if he had it from heaven, sir," Bassett
reiterated.
"Our house. I hate our house for whispering."
"Why - why" - the boy fidgeted - "why, I don't know.
But it's always short of money, you know, uncle."
"I know it, son, I know it."
"You know people send mother writs, don't you,
uncle?"
"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.
"And then the house whispers, like people laughing at
you behind your back. It's awful, that is! I thought if I
was lucky -"
"You might stop it," added the uncle.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an
uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.
"Well, then!" said the uncle. "What are we doing?"
"I should say so!" said the uncle.
218
"I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky," said
the boy.
on her mouth. She hid the letter under the pile of
others, and said not a word about it.
"Why not, son?"
"Didn't you have anything nice in the post for your
birthday, mother?" said Paul.
"She'd stop me."
"I don't think she would."
"Oh!" - and the boy writhed in an odd way - "I don't
want her to know, uncle."
"All right, son! We'll manage it without her
knowing."
They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's
suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his
uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who
was then to inform Paul's mother that a relative had
put five thousand pounds into his hands, which sum
was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on
the mother's birthday, for the next five years.
"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand
pounds for five successive years," said Uncle Oscar.
"I hope it won't make it all the harder for her later."
Paul's mother had her birthday in November. The
house had been 'whispering' worse than ever lately,
and, even in spite of his luck, Paul could not bear up
against it. He was very anxious to see the effect of
the birthday letter, telling his mother about the
thousand pounds.
When there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals
with his parents, as he was beyond the nursery
control. His mother went into town nearly every day.
She had discovered that she had an odd knack of
sketching furs and dress materials, so she worked
secretly in the studio of a friend who was the chief
'artist' for the leading drapers. She drew the figures of
ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the
newspaper advertisements. This young woman artist
earned several thousand pounds a year, but Paul's
mother only made several hundreds, and she was
again dissatisfied. She so wanted to be first in
something, and she did not succeed, even in making
sketches for drapery advertisements.
She was down to breakfast on the morning of her
birthday. Paul watched her face as she read her
letters. He knew the lawyer's letter. As his mother
read it, her face hardened and became more
expressionless. Then a cold, determined look came
"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice cold and
hard and absent.
She went away to town without saying more.
But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared. He said
Paul's mother had had a long interview with the
lawyer, asking if the whole five thousand could not
be advanced at once, as she was in debt.
"What do you think, uncle?" said the boy.
"I leave it to you, son."
"Oh, let her have it, then! We can get some more with
the other," said the boy.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, laddie!"
said Uncle Oscar.
"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National; or the
Lincolnshire; or else the Derby. I'm sure to know for
one of them," said Paul.
So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's
mother touched the whole five thousand. Then
something very curious happened. The voices in the
house suddenly went mad, like a chorus of frogs on a
spring evening. There were certain new furnishings,
and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his
father's school, in the following autumn. There were
flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury
Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in
the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almondblossom, and from under the piles of iridescent
cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of
ecstasy: "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there
must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w there must be more money! - more than ever! More
than ever!"
It frightened Paul terribly. He studied away at his
Latin and Greek with his tutor. But his intense hours
were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had
gone by: he had not 'known', and had lost a hundred
pounds. Summer was at hand. He was in agony for
the Lincoln. But even for the Lincoln he didn't
219
'know', and he lost fifty pounds. He became wildeyed and strange, as if something were going to
explode in him.
"Let it alone, son! Don't you bother about it!" urged
Uncle Oscar. But it was as if the boy couldn't really
hear what his uncle was saying.
"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got to know for
the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes
blazing with a sort of madness.
His mother noticed how overwrought he was.
"You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't you like to
go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think
you'd better," she said, looking down at him
anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.
But his mother, after standing undecided and a little
bit sullen for some moments, said: "Very well, then!
Don't go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you
don't wish it. But promise me you won't think so
much about horse-racing and events as you call
them!"
"Oh no," said the boy casually. "I won't think much
about them, mother. You needn't worry. I wouldn't
worry, mother, if I were you."
"If you were me and I were you," said his mother, "I
wonder what we should do!"
"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't
you?" the boy repeated.
"I should be awfully glad to know it," she said
wearily.
But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.
"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby, mother!" he
said. "I couldn't possibly!"
"Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean, you ought to
know you needn't worry," he insisted.
"Ought I? Then I'll see about it," she said.
"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy
when she was opposed. "Why not? You can still go
from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle
Oscar, if that that's what you wish. No need for you
to wait here. Besides, I think you care too much
about these races. It's a bad sign. My family has been
a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow
up how much damage it has done. But it has done
damage. I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask
Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you, unless you
promise to be reasonable about it: go away to the
seaside and forget it. You're all nerves!"
"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as you don't
send me away till after the Derby," the boy said.
"Send you away from where? Just from this house?"
Paul's secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that
which had no name. Since he was emancipated from
a nurse and a nursery-governess, he had had his
rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top
of the house.
"Surely you're too big for a rocking-horse!" his
mother had remonstrated.
"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I
like to have some sort of animal about," had been his
quaint answer.
"Do you feel he keeps you company?" she laughed.
"Oh yes! He's very good, he always keeps me
company, when I'm there," said Paul.
"Yes," he said, gazing at her.
"Why, you curious child, what makes you care about
this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you
loved it."
He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret
within a secret, something he had not divulged, even
to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.
So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested
prance in the boy's bedroom.
The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more
and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to
him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really
uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of
uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour,
she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was
220
almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once,
and know he was safe.
Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the
door-handle.
Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party
in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her
boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could
hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and
main, for she believed in common sense. But it was
too strong. She had to leave the dance and go
downstairs to telephone to the country. The children's
nursery-governess was terribly surprised and startled
at being rung up in the night.
The room was dark. Yet in the space near the
window, she heard and saw something plunging to
and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.
Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her
son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging on the
rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up,
as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she
stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal,
in the doorway.
"Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?"
"Paul!" she cried. "Whatever are you doing?"
"Oh yes, they are quite all right."
"Master Paul? Is he all right?"
"He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and
look at him?"
"No," said Paul's mother reluctantly. "No! Don't
trouble. It's all right. Don't sit up. We shall be home
fairly soon." She did not want her son's privacy
intruded upon.
"Very good," said the governess.
It was about one o'clock when Paul's mother and
father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul's
mother went to her room and slipped off her white
fur cloak. She had told her maid not to wait up for
her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a
whisky and soda.
And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart,
she stole upstairs to her son's room. Noiselessly she
went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint
noise? What was it?
She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door,
listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not
loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless
noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in
violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God's
name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she
knew the noise. She knew what it was.
Yet she could not place it. She couldn't say what it
was. And on and on it went, like a madness.
"It's Malabar!" he screamed in a powerful, strange
voice. "It's Malabar!"
His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless
second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then
he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her
tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to
gather him up.
But he was unconscious, and unconscious he
remained, with some brain-fever. He talked and
tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.
"Malabar! It's Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know! It's
Malabar!"
So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the
rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" asked the heartfrozen mother.
"I don't know," said the father stonily.
"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked her
brother Oscar.
"It's one of the horses running for the Derby," was the
answer.
And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to
Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at
fourteen to one.
The third day of the illness was critical: they were
waiting for a change. The boy, with his rather long,
curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He
221
neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes
were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her
heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.
In the evening Oscar Cresswell did not come, but
Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for
one moment, just one moment? Paul's mother was
very angry at the intrusion, but on second thoughts
she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett
might bring him to consciousness.
The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown
moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into
the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul's mother,
and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering,
smallish eyes at the tossing, dying child.
"Master Paul!" he whispered. "Master Paul! Malabar
came in first all right, a clean win. I did as you told
me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you
have; you've got over eighty thousand. Malabar came
in all right, Master Paul."
"Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I
say Malabar? Do you think I'm lucky, mother? I
knew Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand
pounds! I call that lucky, don't you, mother? Over
eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't I know I
knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse
till I'm sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you can go as
high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth,
Bassett?"
"I went a thousand on it, Master Paul."
"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse,
and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh,
absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"
"No, you never did," said his mother.
The Gift of the Magi
O. Henry
.......One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all.
And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved
one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and
the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks
burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that
such close dealing implied. Three times Della
counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And
the next day would be Christmas.
.......There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on
the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it.
Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made
up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
.......While the mistress of the home is gradually
subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a
look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It
did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly
had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy
squad.
.......In the vestibule below was a letter-box into
which no letter would go, and an electric button from
which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also
appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name
"Mr. James Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham"
had been flung to the breeze during a former period
of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30
per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20,
the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though
they were thinking seriously of contracting to a
modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James
Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat
above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by
Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to
you as Della. Which is all very good.
But the boy died in the night.
And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her
brother's voice saying to her, "My God, Hester,
you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor
devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil,
he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rockinghorse to find a winner."
___________________________________________
.......Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks
with the powder rag. She stood by the window and
looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in
a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day,
and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a
present. She had been saving every penny she could
for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week
doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she
had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a
present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had
spent planning for something nice for him.
222
Something fine and rare and sterling—something just
a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being
owned by Jim.
......."Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
......."I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and
let's have a sight at the looks of it."
.......There was a pier-glass between the windows of
the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8
flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by
observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of
longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception
of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the
art.
.......Down rippled the brown cascade. "Twenty
dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a
practised hand.
......."Give it to me quick," said Della.
.......Suddenly she whirled from the window and
stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining
brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair
and let it fall to its full length.
.......Now, there were two possessions of the James
Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty
pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his
father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's
hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across
the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out
the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her
Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been
the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the
basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every
time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard
from envy.
.......So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her,
rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.
It reached below her knee and made itself almost a
garment for her. And then she did it up again
nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute
and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the
worn red carpet.
.......On went her old brown jacket; on went her old
brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the
brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the
door and down the stairs to the street.
.......Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme.
Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up
Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame,
large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
.......Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy
wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was
ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
.......She found it at last. It surely had been made for
Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any
of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside
out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance
alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all
good things should do. It was even worthy of The
Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value—the
description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they
took from her for it, and she hurried home with the
87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be
properly anxious about the time in any company.
Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on
the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used
in place of a chain.
.......When Della reached home her intoxication gave
way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her
curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work
repairing the ravages made by generosity added to
love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear
friends—a mammoth task.
.......Within forty minutes her head was covered with
tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully
like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection
in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
......."If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself,
"before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look
223
like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I
do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eightyseven cents?"
......."Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you
like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my
hair, ain't I?"
.......At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the fryingpan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to
cook the chops.
.......Jim looked about the room curiously.
......."You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air
almost of idiocy.
.......Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain
in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the
door that he always entered. Then she heard his step
on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for
saying little silent prayers about the simplest
everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please
God, make him think I am still pretty."
.......The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed
it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he
was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a
family! He needed a new overcoat and he was
without gloves.
.......Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a
setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon
Della, and there was an expression in them that she
could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of
the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He
simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar
expression on his face.
.......Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
......."Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that
way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't
have lived through Christmas without giving you a
present. It'll grow out again—you won't mind, will
you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast.
Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You
don't know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift
I've got for you."
......."You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim,
laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact
yet even after the hardest mental labor.
......."You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I
tell you—sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy.
Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs
of my head were numbered," she went on with
sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever
count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on,
Jim?"
.......Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake.
He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard
with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in
the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million
a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a
wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi
brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.
This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
.......Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and
threw it upon the table.
......."Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about
me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a
haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me
like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that
package you may see why you had me going a while
at first."
.......White fingers and nimble tore at the string and
paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then,
alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and
wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all
the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
.......For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side
and back, that Della had worshipped long in a
Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise
shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in
224
the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive
combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved
and yearned over them without the least hope of
possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses
that should have adorned the coveted adornments
were gone.
.......But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length
she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile
and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
.......And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat
and cried, "Oh, oh!"
.......Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She
held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The
dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection
of her bright and ardent spirit.
......."Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to
find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred
times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see
how it looks on it."
.......Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the
couch and put his hands under the back of his head
and smiled.
......."Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents
away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use
just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to
buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops
on."
.......The magi, as you know, were wise men—
wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the
Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no
doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of
exchange in case of duplication. And here I have
lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two
foolish children in a flat who most unwisely
sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their
house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let
it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the
wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they
are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the
magi.
___________________________________________
THE MONKEY'S PAW W.W. Jacobs
I.
WITHOUT, the night was cold and wet, but in the
small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were
drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son
were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about
the game involving radical changes, putting his king
into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even
provoked comment from the white-haired old lady
knitting placidly by the fire.
"Hark at the wind," said Mr. White, who, having
seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably
desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.
"I'm listening," said the latter, grimly surveying the
board as he stretched out his hand. "Check."
"I should hardly think that he'd come to-night," said
his father, with his hand poised over the board.
"Mate," replied the son.
"That's the worst of living so far out," bawled Mr.
White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; "of
all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live
in, this is the worst. Pathway's a bog, and the road's a
torrent. I don't know what people are thinking about.
I suppose because only two houses on the road are
let, they think it doesn't matter."
"Never mind, dear," said his wife soothingly;
"perhaps you'll win the next one."
Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to
intercept a knowing glance between mother and son.
The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty
grin in his thin grey beard.
"There he is," said Herbert White, as the gate
banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward
the door.
The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening
the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival.
The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that
Mrs. White said, "Tut, tut!" and coughed gently as
225
her husband entered the room, followed by a tall
burly man, beady of eye and rubicund of visage.
He took something out of his pocket and proffered
it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son,
taking it, examined it curiously.
"Sergeant-Major Morris," he said, introducing him.
The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the
proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while
his host got out whisky and tumblers and stood a
small copper kettle on the fire.
At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began
to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager
interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared
his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of strange
scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and
strange peoples.
"Twenty-one years of it," said Mr. White, nodding
at his wife and son. "When he went away he was a
slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him."
"He don't look to have taken much harm," said Mrs.
White, politely.
"I'd like to go to India myself," said the old man,
"just to look round a bit, you know."
"Better where you are," said the sergeant-major,
shaking his head. He put down the empty glass, and
sighing softly, shook it again.
"I should like to see those old temples and fakirs
and jugglers," said the old man. "What was that you
started telling me the other day about a monkey's paw
or something, Morris?"
"Nothing," said the soldier hastily. "Leastways,
nothing worth hearing."
"Monkey's paw?" said Mrs. White curiously.
"Well, it's just a bit of what you might call magic,
perhaps," said the sergeant-major off-handedly.
His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The
visitor absentmindedly put his empty glass to his lips
and then set it down again. His host filled it for him.
"To look at," said the sergeant-major, fumbling in
his pocket, "it's just an ordinary little paw, dried to a
mummy."
"And what is there special about it?" inquired Mr.
White, as he took it from his son and, having
examined it, placed it upon the table.
"It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the
sergeant-major, "a very holy man. He wanted to show
that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who
interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell
on it so that three separate men could each have three
wishes from it."
His manner was so impressive that his hearers were
conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat.
"Well, why don't you have three, sir?" said Herbert
White cleverly.
The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age
is wont to regard presumptuous youth. "I have," he
said quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.
"And did you really have the three wishes granted?"
asked Mrs. White.
"I did," said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped
against his strong teeth.
"And has anybody else wished?" inquired the old
lady.
"The first man had his three wishes, yes," was the
reply. "I don't know what the first two were, but the
third was for death. That's how I got the paw."
His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the
group.
"If you've had your three wishes, it's no good to you
now, then, Morris," said the old man at last. "What do
you keep it for?"
The soldier shook his head. "Fancy, I suppose," he
said slowly.
"If you could have another three wishes," said the
old man, eyeing him keenly, "would you have them?"
"I don't know," said the other. "I don't know."
226
He took the paw, and dangling it between his front
finger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire.
White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched
it off.
"Better let it burn," said the soldier solemnly.
"If you don't want it, Morris," said the old man,
"give it to me."
"I won't," said his friend doggedly. "I threw it on the
fire. If you keep it, don't blame me for what happens.
Pitch it on the fire again, like a sensible man."
The other shook his head and examined his new
possession closely. "How do you do it?" he inquired.
"Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,' said
the sergeant-major, "but I warn you of the
consequences."
"Sounds like the Arabian Nights," said Mrs White,
as she rose and began to set the supper. "Don't you
think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?"
Her husband drew the talisman from his pocket and
then all three burst into laughter as the sergeantmajor, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him
by the arm.
"If you must wish," he said gruffly, "wish for
something sensible."
Mr. White dropped it back into his pocket, and
placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the
business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten,
and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled
fashion to a second instalment of the soldier's
adventures in India.
"If the tale about the monkey paw is not more
truthful than those he has been telling us," said
Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in
time for him to catch the last train, "we shan't make
much out of it."
"Did you give him anything for it, father?" inquired
Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely.
"A trifle," said he, colouring slightly. "He didn't
want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me
again to throw it away."
"Likely," said Herbert, with pretended horror.
"Why, we're going to be rich, and famous, and happy.
Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then
you can't be henpecked."
He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned
Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar.
Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it
dubiously. "I don't know what to wish for, and that's a
fact," he said slowly. "It seems to me I've got all I
want."
"If you only cleared the house, you'd be quite
happy, wouldn't you?" said Herbert, with his hand on
his shoulder. "Well, wish for two hundred pounds,
then; that'll just do it."
His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own
credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a
solemn face somewhat marred by a wink at his
mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few
impressive chords.
"I wish for two hundred pounds," said the old man
distinctly.
A fine crash from the piano greeted the words,
interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man.
His wife and son ran toward him.
"It moved, he cried, with a glance of disgust at the
object as it lay on the floor. "As I wished it twisted in
my hands like a snake."
"Well, I don't see the money," said his son, as he
picked it up and placed it on the table, "and I bet I
never shall."
"It must have been your fancy, father," said his wife,
regarding him anxiously.
He shook his head. "Never mind, though; there's no
harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same."
They sat down by the fire again while the two men
finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher
than ever, and the old man started nervously at the
sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual
and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted
until the old couple rose to retire for the night.
227
"I expect you'll find the cash tied up in a big bag in
the middle of your bed," said Herbert, as he bade
them good-night, "and something horrible squatting
up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you
pocket your ill-gotten gains."
He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying
fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so
horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in
amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy
laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a
little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the
monkey's paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his
hand on his coat and went up to bed.
II.
IN the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it
streamed over the breakfast table Herbert laughed at
his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness
about the room which it had lacked on the previous
night, and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched
on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokened
no great belief in its virtues.
"I suppose all old soldiers are the same," said Mrs
White. "The idea of our listening to such nonsense!
How could wishes be granted in these days? And if
they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you,
father?"
"Might drop on his head from the sky," said the
frivolous Herbert.
"Morris said the things happened so naturally," said
his father, "that you might if you so wished attribute
it to coincidence."
"Well, don't break into the money before I come
back," said Herbert, as he rose from the table. "I'm
afraid it'll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and
we shall have to disown you."
His mother laughed, and following him to the door,
watched him down the road, and returning to the
breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her
husband's credulity. All of which did not prevent her
from scurrying to the door at the postman's knock,
nor prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to
retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she
found that the post brought a tailor's bill.
"Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks,
I expect, when he comes home," she said, as they sat
at dinner.
"I dare say," said Mr. White, pouring himself out
some beer; "but for all that, the thing moved in my
hand; that I'll swear to."
"You thought it did," said the old lady soothingly.
"I say it did," replied the other. "There was no
thought about it; I had just----What's the matter?"
His wife made no reply. She was watching the
mysterious movements of a man outside, who,
peering in an undecided fashion at the house,
appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter. In
mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she
noticed that the stranger was well dressed and wore a
silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at
the gate, and then walked on again. The fourth time
he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden
resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs.
White at the same moment placed her hands behind
her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her
apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath the
cushion of her chair.
She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease,
into the room. He gazed at her furtively, and listened
in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized
for the appearance of the room, and her husband's
coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the
garden. She then waited as patiently as her sex would
permit, for him to broach his business, but he was at
first strangely silent.
"I--was asked to call," he said at last, and stooped
and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. "I
come from Maw and Meggins."
The old lady started. "Is anything the matter?" she
asked breathlessly. "Has anything happened to
Herbert? What is it? What is it?"
Her husband interposed. "There, there, mother," he
said hastily. "Sit down, and don't jump to
conclusions. You've not brought bad news, I'm sure,
sir" and he eyed the other wistfully.
"I'm sorry----" began the visitor.
"Is he hurt?" demanded the mother.
228
The visitor bowed in assent. "Badly hurt," he said
quietly, "but he is not in any pain."
"Oh, thank God!" said the old woman, clasping her
hands. "Thank God for that! Thank----"
She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of
the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful
confirmation of her fears in the other's averted face.
She caught her breath, and turning to her slowerwitted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his.
There was a long silence.
"He was caught in the machinery," said the visitor at
length, in a low voice.
"Caught in the machinery," repeated Mr. White, in a
dazed fashion, "yes."
He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking
his wife's hand between his own, pressed it as he had
been wont to do in their old courting days nearly
forty years before.
"He was the only one left to us," he said, turning
gently to the visitor. "It is hard."
Unconscious of his wife's shriek, the old man smiled
faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and
dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.
III.
IN the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant,
the old people buried their dead, and came back to a
house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over
so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it,
and remained in a state of expectation as though of
something else to happen--something else which was
to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear.
But the days passed, and expectation gave place to
resignation--the hopeless resignation of the old,
sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly
exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk
about, and their days were long to weariness.
It was about a week after that that the old man,
waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand
and found himself alone. The room was in darkness,
and the sound of subdued weeping came from the
window. He raised himself in bed and listened.
"Come back," he said tenderly. "You will be cold."
The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the
window. "The firm wished me to convey their sincere
sympathy with you in your great loss," he said,
without looking round. "I beg that you will
understand I am only their servant and merely
obeying orders."
There was no reply; the old woman's face was
white, her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on
the husband's face was a look such as his friend the
sergeant might have carried into his first action.
"I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all
responsibility," continued the other. "They admit no
liability at all, but in consideration of your son's
services they wish to present you with a certain sum
as compensation."
Mr. White dropped his wife's hand, and rising to his
feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry
lips shaped the words, "How much?"
"It is colder for my son," said the old woman, and
wept afresh.
The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The
bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He
dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry
from his wife awoke him with a start.
"The paw!" she cried wildly. "The monkey's paw!"
He started up in alarm. "Where? Where is it? What's
the matter?"
She came stumbling across the room toward him. "I
want it," she said quietly. "You've not destroyed it?"
"It's in the parlour, on the bracket," he replied,
marvelling. "Why?"
She cried and laughed together, and bending over,
kissed his cheek.
"Two hundred pounds," was the answer.
"I only just thought of it," she said hysterically.
"Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't you think
of it?"
229
"Think of what?" he questioned.
"The other two wishes," she replied rapidly. "We've
only had one."
"Was not that enough?" he demanded fiercely.
"No," she cried, triumphantly; "we'll have one more.
Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive
again."
The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes
from his quaking limbs. "Good God, you are mad!"
he cried aghast.
"Get it," she panted; "get it quickly, and wish---Oh, my boy, my boy!"
Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. "Get
back to bed," he said, unsteadily. "You don't know
what you are saying."
"We had the first wish granted," said the old
woman, feverishly; "why not the second."
"A coincidence," stammered the old man.
"Go and get it and wish," cried the old woman,
quivering with excitement.
The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice
shook. "He has been dead ten days, and besides he--I
would not tell you else, but--I could only recognize
him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to
see then, how now?"
"Bring him back," cried the old woman, and
dragged him toward the door. "Do you think I fear
the child I have nursed?"
He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to
the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman
was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken
wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he
could escape from the room seized upon him, and he
caught his breath as he found that he had lost the
direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he
felt his way round the table, and groped along the
wall until he found himself in the small passage with
the unwholesome thing in his hand.
Even his wife's face seemed changed as he entered
the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears
seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was
afraid of her.
"Wish!" she cried, in a strong voice.
"It is foolish and wicked," he faltered.
"Wish!" repeated his wife.
He raised his hand. "I wish my son alive again."
The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it
fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the
old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window
and raised the blind.
He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing
occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering
through the window. The candle end, which had
burnt below the rim of the china candlestick, was
throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls,
until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired.
The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at
the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and
a minute or two afterward the old woman came
silently and apathetically beside him.
Neither spoke, but both lay silently listening to the
ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky
mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The
darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some
time screwing up his courage, the husband took the
box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for
a candle.
At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he
paused to strike another, and at the same moment a
knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible,
sounded on the front door.
The matches fell from his hand. He stood
motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was
repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his
room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock
sounded through the house.
"What's that?" cried the old woman, starting up.
"A rat," said the old man, in shaking tones--"a rat. It
passed me on the stairs."
His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock
resounded through the house.
230
"It's Herbert!" she screamed. "It's Herbert!"
She ran to the door, but her husband was before her,
and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.
"What are you going to do?" he whispered hoarsely.
"It's my boy; it's Herbert!" she cried, struggling
mechanically. "I forgot it was two miles away. What
are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the
door."
"For God's sake, don't let it in," cried the old man
trembling.
"You're afraid of your own son," she cried,
struggling. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert; I'm
coming."
There was another knock, and another. The old
woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran
from the room. Her husband followed to the landing,
and called after her appealingly as she hurried
downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the
bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket.
Then the old woman's voice, strained and panting.
"The bolt," she cried loudly. "Come down. I can't
reach it."
But her husband was on his hands and knees
groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he
could only find it before the thing outside got in. A
perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the
house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his
wife put it down in the passage against the door. He
heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back,
and at the same moment he found the monkey's paw,
and frantically breathed his third and last wish.
The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes
of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn
back and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the
staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and
misery from his wife gave him courage to run down
to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street
lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and
deserted road.
___________________________________________
Guy de Maupassant
The Necklace
She was one of those pretty and charming girls born,
as though fate had blundered over her, into a family
of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no
expectations, no means of getting known, understood,
loved, and wedded by a man of wealth and
distinction; and she let herself be married off to a
little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes
were simple because she had never been able to
afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though
she had married beneath her; for women have no
caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving
them for birth or family, their natural delicacy, their
instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit, are their
only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level
with the highest lady in the land.
She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for
every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the
poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn
chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which
other women of her class would not even have been
aware, tormented and insulted her. The sight of the
little Breton girl who came to do the work in her little
house aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless
dreams in her mind. She imagined silent
antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by
torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen
in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-chairs,
overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove. She
imagined vast saloons hung with antique silks,
exquisite pieces of furniture supporting priceless
ornaments, and small, charming, perfumed rooms,
created just for little parties of intimate friends, men
who were famous and sought after, whose homage
roused every other woman's envious longings.
When she sat down for dinner at the round table
covered with a three-days-old cloth, opposite her
husband, who took the cover off the soup-tureen,
exclaiming delightedly: "Aha! Scotch broth! What
could be better?" she imagined delicate meals,
gleaming silver, tapestries peopling the walls with
folk of a past age and strange birds in faery forests;
she imagined delicate food served in marvellous
dishes, murmured gallantries, listened to with an
inscrutable smile as one trifled with the rosy flesh of
trout or wings of asparagus chicken.
She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And these
were the only things she loved; she felt that she was
made for them. She had longed so eagerly to charm,
to be desired, to be wildly attractive and sought after.
231
She had a rich friend, an old school friend whom
she refused to visit, because she suffered so keenly
when she returned home. She would weep whole
days, with grief, regret, despair, and misery.
yours whose wife will be turned out better than I
shall."
One evening her husband came home with an
exultant air, holding a large envelope in his hand.
"Look here, Mathilde," he persisted. "What would
be the cost of a suitable dress, which you could use
on other occasions as well, something very simple?"
He was heart-broken.
"Here's something for you," he said.
Swiftly she tore the paper and drew out a printed
card on which were these words:
"The Minister of Education and Madame
Ramponneau request the pleasure of the company of
Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Ministry on the
evening of Monday, January the 18th."
Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped,
she flung the invitation petulantly across the table,
murmuring:
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"Why, darling, I thought you'd be pleased. You
never go out, and this is a great occasion. I had
tremendous trouble to get it. Every one wants one; it's
very select, and very few go to the clerks. You'll see
all the really big people there."
She looked at him out of furious eyes, and said
impatiently: "And what do you suppose I am to wear
at such an affair?"
She thought for several seconds, reckoning up
prices and also wondering for how large a sum she
could ask without bringing upon herself an
immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror from
the careful-minded clerk.
At last she replied with some hesitation:
"I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it on
four hundred francs."
He grew slightly pale, for this was exactly the
amount he had been saving for a gun, intending to get
a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre
with some friends who went lark-shooting there on
Sundays.
Nevertheless he said: "Very well. I'll give you four
hundred francs. But try and get a really nice dress
with the money."
The day of the party drew near, and Madame
Loisel seemed sad, uneasy and anxious. Her dress
was ready, however. One e