Short Stories

[nusrat-diu]

 
Guy de Maupassant
Mademoiselle Fifi

Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading his newspaper as he lay back in a great easy-chair, with his booted feet on the beautiful marble mantelpiece where his spurs had made two holes, which had grown deeper every day during the three months that he had been in the chateau of Uville.

     A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was stained with liqueur, burned by cigars, notched by the penknife of the victorious officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a pencil, to jot down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just as it took his fancy.

     When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his orderly had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green wood on the fire, for these gentlemen were gradually cutting down the park in order to keep themselves warm, he went to the window. The rain was descending in torrents, a regular Normandy rain, which looked as if it were being poured out by some furious person, a slanting rain, opaque as a curtain, which formed a kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and which deluged everything, a rain such as one frequently experiences in the neighborhood of Rouen, which is the watering-pot of France.

     For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf and at the swollen Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks; he was drumming a waltz with his fingers on the window-panes, when a noise made him turn round. It was his second in command, Captain Baron van Kelweinstein.

     The major was a giant, with broad shoulders and a long, fan-like beard, which hung down like a curtain to his chest. His whole solemn person suggested the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying his tail spread out on his breast. He had cold, gentle blue eyes, and a scar from a swordcut, which he had received in the war with Austria; he was said to be an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.

<  2  >
     The captain, a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted in at the waist, his red hair was cropped quite close to his head, and in certain lights he almost looked as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one night, though he could not quite remember how, and this sometimes made him speak unintelligibly, and he had a bald patch on top of his head surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright golden hair, which made him look like a monk.

     The commandant shook hands with him and drank his cup of coffee (the sixth that morning), while he listened to his subordinate's report of what had occurred; and then they both went to the window and declared that it was a very unpleasant outlook. The major, who was a quiet man, with a wife at home, could accommodate himself to everything; but the captain, who led a fast life, who was in the habit of frequenting low resorts, and enjoying women's society, was angry at having to be shut up for three months in that wretched hole.

     There was a knock at the door, and when the commandant said, "Come in," one of the orderlies appeared, and by his mere presence announced that breakfast was ready. In the dining-room they met three other officers of lower rank - a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as gunpowder.

     Since he had been in France his comrades had called him nothing but Mademoiselle Fifi. They had given him that nickname on account of his dandified style and small waist, which looked as if he wore corsets; of his pale face, on which his budding mustache scarcely showed, and on account of the habit he had acquired of employing the French expression, 'Fi, fi donc', which he pronounced with a slight whistle when he wished to express his sovereign contempt for persons or things.

     The dining-room of the chateau was a magnificent long room, whose fine old mirrors, that were cracked by pistol bullets, and whose Flemish tapestry, which was cut to ribbons, and hanging in rags in places from sword-cuts, told too well what Mademoiselle Fifi's occupation was during his spare time.

<  3  >
     There were three family portraits on the walls a steel-clad knight, a cardinal and a judge, who were all smoking long porcelain pipes, which had been inserted into holes in the canvas, while a lady in a long, pointed waist proudly exhibited a pair of enormous mustaches, drawn with charcoal. The officers ate their breakfast almost in silence in that mutilated room, which looked dull in the rain and melancholy in its dilapidated condition, although its old oak floor had become as solid as the stone floor of an inn.

     When they had finished eating and were smoking and drinking, they began, as usual, to berate the dull life they were leading. The bottles of brandy and of liqueur passed from hand to hand, and all sat back in their chairs and took repeated sips from their glasses, scarcely removing from their mouths the long, curved stems, which terminated in china bowls, painted in a manner to delight a Hottentot.

     As soon as their glasses were empty they filled them again, with a gesture of resigned weariness, but Mademoiselle Fifi emptied his every minute, and a soldier immediately gave him another. They were enveloped in a cloud of strong tobacco smoke, and seemed to be sunk in a state of drowsy, stupid intoxication, that condition of stupid intoxication of men who have nothing to do, when suddenly the baron sat up and said: "Heavens! This cannot go on; we must think of something to do." And on hearing this, Lieutenant Otto and Sub-lieutenant Fritz, who preeminently possessed the serious, heavy German countenance, said: "What, captain?"

     He thought for a few moments and then replied: "What? Why, we must get up some entertainment, if the commandant will allow us." "What sort of an entertainment, captain?" the major asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "I will arrange all that, commandant," the baron said. "I will send Le Devoir to Rouen, and he will bring back some ladies. I know where they can be found, We will have supper here, as all the materials are at hand and; at least, we shall have a jolly evening."

<  4  >
     Graf von Farlsberg shrugged his shoulders with a smile: "You must surely be mad, my friend."

     But all the other officers had risen and surrounded their chief, saying: "Let the captain have his way, commandant; it is terribly dull here." And the major ended by yielding. "Very well," he replied, and the baron immediately sent for Le Devoir. He was an old non-commissioned officer, who had never been seen to smile, but who carried out all the orders of his superiors to the letter, no matter what they might be. He stood there, with an impassive face, while he received the baron's instructions, and then went out, and five minutes later a large military wagon, covered with tarpaulin, galloped off as fast as four horses could draw it in the pouring rain. The officers all seemed to awaken from their lethargy, their looks brightened,, and they began to talk.

     Although it was raining as hard as ever, the major declared that it was not so dark, and Lieutenant von Grossling said with conviction that the sky was clearing up, while Mademoiselle Fifi did not seem to be able to keep still. He got up and sat down again, and his bright eyes seemed to be looking for something to destroy. Suddenly, looking at the lady with the mustaches, the young fellow pulled out his revolver and said: "You shall not see it." And without leaving his seat he aimed, and with two successive bullets cut out both the eyes of the portrait.

     "Let us make a mine!" he then exclaimed, and the conversation was suddenly interrupted, as if they had found some fresh and powerful subject of interest. The mine was his invention, his method of destruction, and his favorite amusement.

     When he left the chateau, the lawful owner, Comte Fernand d'Amoys d'Uville, had not had time to carry away or to hide anything except the plate, which had been stowed away in a hole made in one of the walls. As he was very rich and had good taste, the large drawing-room, which opened into the dining-room, looked like a gallery in a museum, before his precipitate flight.

<  5  >
     Expensive oil paintings, water colors and drawings hung against the walls, while on the tables, on the hanging shelves and in elegant glass cupboards there were a thousand ornaments: small vases, statuettes, groups of Dresden china and grotesque Chinese figures, old ivory and Venetian glass, which filled the large room with their costly and fantastic array.

     Scarcely anything was left now; not that the things had been stolen, for the major would not have allowed that, but Mademoiselle Fifi would every now and then have a mine, and on those occasions all the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of punk through the spout. This he lighted and took his infernal machine into the next room, but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectant, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion had shaken the chateau, they all rushed in at once.

     Mademoiselle Fifi, who got in first, clapped his hands in delight at the sight of a terra-cotta Venus, whose head had been blown off, and each picked up pieces of porcelain and wondered at the strange shape of the fragments, while the major was looking with a paternal eye at the large drawing-room, which had been wrecked after the fashion of a Nero, and was strewn with the fragments of works of art. He went out first and said with a smile: "That was a great success this time."

     But there was such a cloud of smoke in the dining-room, mingled with the tobacco smoke, that they could not breathe, so the commandant opened the window, and all the officers, who had returned for a last glass of cognac, went up to it.

     The moist air blew into the room, bringing with it a sort of powdery spray, which sprinkled their beards. They looked at the tall trees which were dripping with rain, at the broad valley which was covered with mist, and at the church spire in the distance, which rose up like a gray point in the beating rain.

<  6  >
     The bells had not rung since their arrival. That was the only resistance which the invaders had met with in the neighborhood. The parish priest had not refused to take in and to feed the Prussian soldiers; he had several times even drunk a bottle of beer or claret with the hostile commandant, who often employed him as a benevolent intermediary; but it was no use to ask him for a single stroke of the bells; he would sooner have allowed himself to be shot. That was his way of protesting against the invasion, a peaceful and silent protest, the only one, he said, which was suitable to a priest, who was a man of mildness, and not of blood; and every one, for twenty-five miles round, praised Abbe Chantavoine's firmness and heroism in venturing to proclaim the public mourning by the obstinate silence of his church bells.

     The whole village, enthusiastic at his resistance, was ready to back up their pastor and to risk anything, for they looked upon that silent protest as the safeguard of the national honor. It seemed to the peasants that thus they deserved better of their country than Belfort and Strassburg, that they had set an equally valuable example, and that the name of their little village would become immortalized by that; but, with that exception, they refused their Prussian conquerors nothing.

     The commandant and his officers laughed among themselves at this inoffensive courage, and as the people in the whole country round showed themselves obliging and compliant toward them, they willingly tolerated their silent patriotism. Little Baron Wilhelm alone would have liked to have forced them to ring the bells. He was very angry at his superior's politic compliance with the priest's scruples, and every day begged the commandant to allow him to sound "ding-dong, ding-dong," just once, only just once, just by way of a joke. And he asked it in the coaxing, tender voice of some loved woman who is bent on obtaining her wish, but the commandant would not yield, and to console himself, Mademoiselle Fifi made a mine in the Chateau d'Uville.

     The five men stood there together for five minutes, breathing in the moist air, and at last Lieutenant Fritz said with a laugh: "The ladies will certainly not have fine weather for their drive. Then they separated, each to his duty, while the captain had plenty to do in arranging for the dinner.

<  7  >
     When they met again toward evening they began to laugh at seeing each other as spick and span and smart as on the day of a grand review. The commandant's hair did not look so gray as it was in the morning, and the captain had shaved, leaving only his mustache, which made him look as if he had a streak of fire under his nose.

     In spite of the rain, they left the window open, and one of them went to listen from time to time; and at a quarter past six the baron said he heard a rumbling in the distance. They all rushed down, and presently the wagon drove up at a gallop with its four horses steaming and blowing, and splashed with mud to their girths. Five women dismounted, five handsome girls whom a comrade of the captain, to whom Le Devoir had presented his card, had selected with care.

     They had not required much pressing, as they had got to know the Prussians in the three months during which they had had to do with them, and so they resigned themselves to the men as they did to the state of affairs.

     They went at once into the dining-room, which looked still more dismal in its dilapidated condition when it was lighted up; while the table covered with choice dishes, the beautiful china and glass, and the plate, which had been found in the hole in the wall where its owner had hidden it, gave it the appearance of a bandits' inn, where they were supping after committing a robbery in the place. The captain was radiant, and put his arm round the women as if he were familiar with them; and when the three young men wanted to appropriate one each, he opposed them authoritatively, reserving to himself the right to apportion them justly, according to their several ranks, so as not to offend the higher powers. Therefore, to avoid all discussion, jarring, and suspicion of partiality, he placed them all in a row according to height, and addressing the tallest, he said in a voice of command:

<  8  >
     "What is your name?" "Pamela," she replied, raising her voice. And then he said: "Number One, called Pamela, is adjudged to the commandant." Then, having kissed Blondina, the second, as a sign of proprietorship, he proffered stout Amanda to Lieutenant Otto; Eva, "the Tomato," to Sub-lieutenant Fritz, and Rachel, the shortest of them all, a very young, dark girl, with eyes as black as ink, a Jewess, whose snub nose proved the rule which allots hooked noses to all her race, to the youngest officer, frail Count Wilhelm d'Eyrick.

     They were all pretty and plump, without any distinctive features, and all had a similarity of complexion and figure.

     The three young men wished to carry off their prizes immediately, under the pretext that they might wish to freshen their toilets; but the captain wisely opposed this, for he said they were quite fit to sit down to dinner, and his experience in such matters carried the day. There were only many kisses, expectant kisses.

     Suddenly Rachel choked, and began to cough until the tears came into her eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretence of kissing her, the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not fly into a rage and did not say a word, but she looked at her tormentor with latent hatred in her dark eyes.

     They sat down to dinner. The commandant seemed delighted; he made Pamela sit on his right, and Blondina on his left, and said, as he unfolded his table napkin: "That was a delightful idea of yours, captain."

     Lieutenants Otto and Fritz, who were as polite as if they had been with fashionable ladies, rather intimidated their guests, but Baron von Kelweinstein beamed, made obscene remarks and seemed on fire with his crown of red hair. He paid the women compliments in French of the Rhine, and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pothouse, from between his two broken teeth.

     They did not understand him, however, and their intelligence did not seem to be awakened until he uttered foul words and broad expressions, which were mangled by his accent. Then they all began to laugh at once like crazy women and fell against each other, repeating the words, which the baron then began to say all wrong, in order that he might have the pleasure of hearing them say dirty things. They gave him as much of that stuff as he wanted, for they were drunk after the first bottle of wine, and resuming their usual habits and manners, they kissed the officers to right and left of them, pinched their arms, uttered wild cries, drank out of every glass and sang French couplets and bits of German songs which they had picked up in their daily intercourse with the enemy.

<  9  >
     Soon the men themselves became very unrestrained, shouted and broke the plates and dishes, while the soldiers behind them waited on them stolidly. The commandant was the only one who kept any restraint upon himself.

     Mademoiselle Fifi had taken Rachel on his knee, and, getting excited, at one moment he kissed the little black curls on her neck and at another he pinched her furiously and made her scream, for he was seized by a species of ferocity, and tormented by his desire to hurt her. He often held her close to him and pressed a long kiss on the Jewess' rosy mouth until she lost her breath, and at last he bit her until a stream of blood ran down her chin and on to her bodice.

     For the second time she looked him full in the face, and as she bathed the wound, she said: "You will have to pay for, that!" But he merely laughed a hard laugh and said: "I will pay."

     At dessert champagne was served, and the commandant rose, and in the same voice in which he would have drunk to the health of the Empress Augusta, he drank: "To our ladies!" And a series of toasts began, toasts worthy of the lowest soldiers and of drunkards, mingled with obscene jokes, which were made still more brutal by their ignorance of the language. They got up, one after the other, trying to say something witty, forcing themselves to be funny, and the women, who were so drunk that they almost fell off their chairs, with vacant looks and clammy tongues applauded madly each time.

     The captain, who no doubt wished to impart an appearance of gallantry to the orgy, raised his glass again and said: "To our victories over hearts and, thereupon Lieutenant Otto, who was a species of bear from the Black Forest, jumped up, inflamed and saturated with drink, and suddenly seized by an access of alcoholic patriotism, he cried: "To our victories over France!"

     Drunk as they were, the women were silent, but Rachel turned round, trembling, and said: "See here, I know some Frenchmen in whose presence you would not dare say that." But the little count, still holding her on his knee, began to laugh, for the wine had made him very merry, and said: "Ha! ha! ha! I have never met any of them myself. As soon as we show ourselves, they run away!" The girl, who was in a terrible rage, shouted into his face: "You are lying, you dirty scoundrel!"

<  10  >
     For a moment he looked at her steadily with his bright eyes upon her, as he had looked at the portrait before he destroyed it with bullets from his revolver, and then he began to laugh: "Ah! yes, talk about them, my dear! Should we be here now if they were brave?" And, getting excited, he exclaimed: "We are the masters! France belongs to us!" She made one spring from his knee and threw herself into her chair, while he arose, held out his glass over the table and repeated: "France and the French, the woods, the fields and the houses of France belong to us!"

     The others, who were quite drunk, and who were suddenly seized by military enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of brutes, seized their glasses, and shouting, "Long live Prussia!" they emptied them at a draught.

     The girls did not protest, for they were reduced to silence and were afraid. Even Rachel did not say a word, as she had no reply to make. Then the little marquis put his champagne glass, which had just been refilled, on the head of the Jewess and exclaimed: "All the women in France belong to us also!"

     At that she got up so quickly that the glass upset, spilling the amber-colored wine on her black hair as if to baptize her, and broke into a hundred fragments, as it fell to the floor. Her lips trembling, she defied the looks of the officer, who was still laughing, and stammered out in a voice choked with rage:

     "That - that - that - is not true - for you shall not have the women of France!"

     He sat down again so as to laugh at his ease; and, trying to speak with the Parisian accent, he said: "She is good, very good! Then why did you come here, my dear?" She was thunderstruck and made no reply for a moment, for in her agitation she did not understand him at first, but as soon as she grasped his meaning she said to him indignantly and vehemently: "I! I! I am not a woman, I am only a strumpet, and that is all that Prussians want."

<  11  >
     Almost before she had finished he slapped her full in the face; but as he was raising his hand again, as if to strike her, she seized a small dessert knife with a silver blade from the table and, almost mad with rage, stabbed him right in the hollow of his neck. Something that he was going to say was cut short in his throat, and he sat there with his mouth half open and a terrible look in his eyes.

     All the officers shouted in horror and leaped up tumultuously; but, throwing her chair between the legs of Lieutenant Otto, who fell down at full length, she ran to the window, opened it before they could seize her and jumped out into the night and the pouring rain.

     In two minutes Mademoiselle Fifi was dead, and Fritz and Otto drew their swords and wanted to kill the women, who threw themselves at their feet and clung to their knees. With some difficulty the major stopped the slaughter and had the four terrified girls locked up in a room under the care of two soldiers, and then he organized the pursuit of the fugitive as carefully as if he were about to engage in a skirmish, feeling quite sure that she would be caught.

     The table, which had been cleared immediately, now served as a bed on which to lay out the lieutenant, and the four officers stood at the windows, rigid and sobered with the stern faces of soldiers on duty, and tried to pierce through the darkness of the night amid the steady torrent of rain. Suddenly a shot was heard and then another, a long way off; and for four hours they heard from time to time near or distant reports and rallying cries, strange words of challenge, uttered in guttural voices.

     In the morning they all returned. Two soldiers had been killed and three others wounded by their comrades in the ardor of that chase and in the confusion of that nocturnal pursuit, but they had not caught Rachel.

<  12  >
     Then the inhabitants of the district were terrorized, the houses were turned topsy-turvy, the country was scoured and beaten up, over and over again, but the Jewess did not seem to have left a single trace of her passage behind her.

     When the general was told of it he gave orders to hush up the affair, so as not to set a bad example to the army, but he severely censured the commandant, who in turn punished his inferiors. The general had said: "One does not go to war in order to amuse one's self and to caress prostitutes." Graf von Farlsberg, in his exasperation, made up his mind to have his revenge on the district, but as he required a pretext for showing severity, he sent for the priest and ordered him to have the bell tolled at the funeral of Baron von Eyrick.

     Contrary to all expectation, the priest showed himself humble and most respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Uville on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded and followed by soldiers who marched with loaded rifles, for the first time the bell sounded its funeral knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it rang again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as any one could desire. Sometimes even it would start at night and sound gently through the darkness, seized with a strange joy, awakened one could not tell why. All the peasants in the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched, and nobody except the priest and the sacristan would now go near the church tower. And they went because a poor girl was living there in grief and solitude and provided for secretly by those two men.

     She remained there until the German troops departed, and then one evening the priest borrowed the baker's cart and himself drove his prisoner to Rouen. When they got there he embraced her, and she quickly went back on foot to the establishment from which she had come, where the proprietress, who thought that she was dead, was very glad to see her.

<  13  >
     A short time afterward a patriot who had no prejudices, and who liked her because of her bold deed, and who afterward loved her for herself, married her and made her a lady quite as good as many others.

 

[nusrat-diu]

Luke Thompson
The Plot
In the morning I said 'Do you want to come to the garden centre?' She said 'Are you going now?' I said I could wait if she wanted to come. So I waited. We'd never grown anything before. We spoke in the car. She said Charles Dickens had invented Christmas, I said it was rubbish, then we didn't speak. At home we ask each other if we want tea, or who should cook tonight. She says 'I want to watch Whitechapel.' I say 'I'm going to do some work.' Or she sits at the computer in the corner, her back in the room, hunched. I sit in another corner, my head hung, reading about Agarttha, or something. We keep in one room, except when I'm working, or when one of us needs the toilet. We keep in one room to save money on lights, but it means the whole house is dark, and it feels dark. It was Anthea's idea, and I like it. I don't mind saying I'm afraid of the dark a little. I'll say it's natural and it shows an open mind when you can't say what's there. Anthea's always been good at that. She has an idea, like out of nowhere. That's why we sit like that, her facing the wall, me in a book, the other rooms all in darkness.

     We went to the garden centre to buy secateurs for cutting back thorns and pruning the cypress. I had in mind to buy another birdbox and some seed and a sack of nuts for them. I told her 'I'd like to get something that's going to flower or smell pretty,' and she looked at what seeds we could sow in February while I looked at birdfeeders and nuts. There was a long sparrow house the size of a rabbit hutch, some small boxes for tits and wasps, one open-faced for robins, wagtails and wrens. I liked the house and I like robins, so I took both, then the nuts and two kilos of seed for a birdfeeder I found with suckers on it to stick on a window. She brought poppies and compost, then we looked at the vegetable seeds for when we'd finished the plot. We could plant parsnips and spring onions today, leeks, carrots and mange tout in March, then maybe squashes and courgettes in April. 'No point getting beans, is there,' she said. 'We never eat them.' Then some more flowers; sunflowers, lupins, some funny-coloured foxgloves – all sorts. We spent a fortune. We loaded it in the back then bought port at the Spar by Ann Summers' for while we worked. We didn't have to drive anywhere again until dark.

<  2  >
     First thing we opened up the shed, let the door hang wide open, which made gardening a little more of an event, kind of challenged our orbit, if you see what I mean. Then we opened up the port, drew the few tools we had, Anthea said 'Do I just turn it all over with the fork?' I said 'I'll take back these brambles.'

     I knelt in the dirt. I said 'Mind these buds, if you see them.' 'What are they?' 'I think they mean to be crocuses.' 'Cool. Okay. Look, there's more over here. I'll use my hands when I get to them.' 'You can see that one's got a little purple in the middle there. See?' Her hair fell out from behind an ear and hung heavily, swinging. She was looking at the bud so intently she seemed almost cross-eyed, like she was fascinated by it, like she was figuring out how it works, the cogs and wheels inside. 'Yes.'

     After I'd finished I took a gulp of port and said I'd work on the tubs around the shed, and the rock garden there, which was nothing but leaves and hollow sticks and some plastic bits from somewhere. I moved the bird table in here, and nailed up the box for robins, about head-height. Anthea was still digging the plot. She had her gloves on, so she never replaced her hair once it fell, but she swung it over to one side of her head, where it curled around her neck. She leaned forward a little awkwardly. Her trousers made her arse a funny shape. They always did that. I remember when she first took them off, her skin was cold and her pubic hair pale orange and sparse. When we were back in the flat. After, I remember, in the morning we woke early, and she walked over to the window, naked waist down, and her hips moved, and she opened the curtains, the shape of a nymph, and she stood upright, her pubic hair now twisted into a single curl.

     She could tell I was watching, and she stood the fork in the ground and walked her long-legged walk, bowed and robotic, to fetch her drink. As she poured it down she stood like she stood at the window again, pale fingered, her hips forward, the line of her leg. 'Am I doing it right?' she said, then I showed her what I was doing and the dirt I'd cleared. 'See how dark this bit is compared to that.' Then we watched the kites over the field and the chimney on the house over the road oozing smoke.

<  3  >
     Around the crocuses Anthea went to her knees and crawled, pulling out small shoots. She made a pile of them, weeds and dirt, tiny roots like blood vessels, over my thorns.

     We were out until dark. The geese flew overhead and we came to. Eight of them, calling. Stupid birds. We really felt the day go. 'Shall we go out to dinner?' I said. She said 'So long as we're back in time,' taking off her boots. I cleared away the fork and gloves and the secateurs and locked the shed. Anthea took in the empty bottle and glasses. There were footprints in the earth where Anthea and I had pressed down the compost over the parsnip and spring onion seeds. There was nothing else we could do now until March. Inside, Anthea said 'I'm going to change.' I took off my socks and trousers at the door, put them straight in the basket. I heard her lock the bathroom door and turn the shower on. No point putting any other clothes on yet, so I stayed as I was. I picked up my book. I turned the light on and drew all the curtains, and sat in the settee and waited for her to finish.

[nusrat-diu]

           

Mary McCluskey
Before/After
In an instant, a life can divide into Before and After. A phone call, a news flash can do it. Invariably, something remains as a reminder. For Joseph, a colleague at Chloe's office, it is Bach playing on the stereo before the screech of brakes, the crunch of metal, an ambulance, the hospital.

     "I hear Bach now and think: oh, yes, I used to love that. Before. In my other life."

     For Chloe's sister, Anna, it is a body shampoo. She told Chloe how the shower was hot and steam clouded the glass. She stood in the warm fog, then sniffed the fresh, pine scent of the new Badedas body shampoo. That clean scent of mountains and good health. Just seconds later, her fingers, tentative, pressed back and forth, smoothing the skin as her brain bristled indignantly. It can't be! But it is, yes, it is. I think it is. A lump.

     And after – doctors visits, surgery, chemo, hair loss, pain.

     Chloe will be reminded of these conversations in four minutes. Right now she chooses a pretty china cup, Staffordshire, patterned with red roses. She pokes the tea bag with a spoon while she pours in the boiling water and then decides to start the laundry while the tea steeps. Dan's shirts are already loaded in the washer but she pulls them out anyway, to shake them. She is nervous that a stray ballpoint might lie forgotten in a pocket, leave a Caspian Sea of navy ink never to be bleached away. As she shakes the shirt, something flies out, floats up like confetti to land on the lid of the dryer. She studies, frowning, a pair of ticket stubs for a New York City theatre.

     She is puzzled at first. Then remembers, of course, the business conference in New York City. Seven days had stretched to ten; Dan had been exhausted when he came home, complaining about the demands of clients, the tedious conversation of his colleagues. Chloe studies these tickets with a sense of unreality, as if she is watching herself on a movie set, frowning for the camera. But her mind is seething with questions. Dan had not told her of this theatre visit. Off-Broadway does not seem appropriate, somehow. Hedda Gabler is an odd choice for an evening with a client. Or a colleague.

<  2  >
     With cold clarity, Chloe sees that these stubs will lead to questions that she does not want to ask, but must ask. That will lead to answers she does not want to hear. Later, a Decree Absolute, loneliness.

     Chloe knows as she stirs her tea, stirs what is now gungy, tarry soup, that she is already in the after. She throws the tea away, gets a fresh teabag, starts over. The tea, though freshly brewed, still tastes thick and stale.

     She understands now, that she has moved in space, slid towards some other life. She has crossed that invisible but solid line. Lipton's Orange Pekoe has joined Bach's St. Matthew's Passion and Badedas with Original Scent, to be forever in the before. And there is no going back.

 

[nusrat-diu]

Hans Christian Andersen
The Little Match-Seller

It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast. In the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl, with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets. It is true she had on a pair of slippers when she left home, but they were not of much use. They were very large, so large, indeed, that they had belonged to her mother, and the poor little creature had lost them in running across the street to avoid two carriages that were rolling along at a terrible rate. One of the slippers she could not find, and a boy seized upon the other and ran away with it, saying that he could use it as a cradle, when he had children of his own. So the little girl went on with her little naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold.

     In an old apron she carried a number of matches, and had a bundle of them in her hands. No one had bought anything of her the whole day, nor had any one given here even a penny. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along; poor little child, she looked the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her long, fair hair, which hung in curls on her shoulders, but she regarded them not.

     Lights were shining from every window, and there was a savory smell of roast goose, for it was New-year's eve - yes, she remembered that. In a corner, between two houses, one of which projected beyond the other, she sank down and huddled herself together. She had drawn her little feet under her, but she could not keep off the cold; and she dared not go home, for she had sold no matches, and could not take home even a penny of money. Her father would certainly beat her; besides, it was almost as cold at home as here, for they had only the roof to cover them, through which the wind howled, although the largest holes had been stopped up with straw and rags.

     Her little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah! perhaps a burning match might be some good, if she could draw it from the bundle and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers.

<  2  >
     She drew one out - "scratch!" how it sputtered as it burnt! It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light. It seemed to the little girl that she was sitting by a large iron stove, with polished brass feet and a brass ornament. How the fire burned! and seemed so beautifully warm that the child stretched out her feet as if to warm them, when, lo! the flame of the match went out, the stove vanished, and she had only the remains of the half-burnt match in her hand.

     She rubbed another match on the wall. It burst into a flame, and where its light fell upon the wall it became as transparent as a veil, and she could see into the room. The table was covered with a snowy white table-cloth, on which stood a splendid dinner service, and a steaming roast goose, stuffed with apples and dried plums. And what was still more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled across the floor, with a knife and fork in its breast, to the little girl. Then the match went out, and there remained nothing but the thick, damp, cold wall before her.

     She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas-tree. It was larger and more beautifully decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door at the rich merchant's. Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show-windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.

     The Christmas lights rose higher and higher, till they looked to her like the stars in the sky. Then she saw a star fall, leaving behind it a bright streak of fire. "Some one is dying," thought the little girl, for her old grandmother, the only one who had ever loved her, and who was now dead, had told her that when a star falls, a soul was going up to God.

<  3  >
     She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance.

     "Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree."

     And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.

     In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year; and the New-year's sun rose and shone upon a little corpse! The child still sat, in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt.

     "She tried to warm herself," said some.

     No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year's day.

[nusrat-diu]

             
 Fernando Sorrentino
An Enlightening Tale
Translated by Clark M. Zlotchew


     This was a very honest beggar.

     One day he knocked at the door of a luxurious mansion. The butler came out and said, "Yes, sir. What do you wish, my good man?"

     The beggar answered, "Just a bit of charity, for the love of God."

     "I shall have to take this up with the lady of the house."

     The butler consulted with the lady of the house and she, who was very miserly, answered. "Jeremiah, give that good man a loaf of bread. One only. And, if possible, one from yesterday."

     Jeremiah, who was secretly in love with his employer, in order to please her sought out a stale loaf of bread, hard as a rock, and handed it to the beggar.

     "Here you are, my good man," he said, no longer calling him sir.

     "God bless you," the beggar answered.

     Jeremiah closed the massive oaken door, and the beggar went off with the loaf of bread under his arm. He came to the vacant lot where he spent his days and nights. He sat down in the shade of a tree, and began to eat the bread suddenly he bit into a hard object and felt one of his molars crumble to pieces. Great was his surprise when he picked up, together with the fragments of his molar, a fine ring of gold, pearls and diamonds.

     "What luck," he said to himself. "I'll sell it and I'll have money for a long time."

     But his honesty immediately prevailed: "No," he added. "I'll seek out its owner and return it."

     Inside the ring were engraved the initials J. X. Neither unintelligent nor lazy, the beggar went to a store and asked for the telephone book. He found that in the entire town there existed only one family whose surname began with X: the Xofaina family.

<  2  >
     Filled with joy for being able to put his honesty into practice, he set out for the home of the Xofaina family. Great was his amazement when he saw it was the very house at which he had been given the loaf of bread containing the ring. He knocked at the door.

     Jeremiah emerged and asked him, "What do you wish, my good man?"

     The beggar answered, "I've found this ring inside the loaf of bread you were good enough to give me a while ago."

     Jeremiah took the ring and said, "I shall have to take this up with the lady of the house."

     He consulted with the lady of the house, and she, happy and fairly singing, exclaimed, "Lucky me! Here we are with the ring I had lost last week, while I was kneading the dough for the bread! These are my initials, J.X., which stand for my name: Josermina Xofaina.

     After a moment of reflection, she added, "Jeremiah, go and give that good man whatever he wants as a reward. As long as it's not very expensive."

     Jeremiah returned to the door and said to the beggar, "My good man, tell me what you would like as a reward for your kind act."

     The beggar answered, "Just a loaf of bread to satisfy my hunger."

     Jeremiah, who was still in love with his employer, in order to please her sought out an old loaf of bread, hard as a rock, and handed it to the beggar.

     "Here you are, my good man."

     "God bless you. "

     Jeremiah shut the massive oaken door, and the beggar went off with the loaf of bread under his arm. He came to the vacant lot in which he spent his days and nights. He sat down in the shade of a tree and began to eat the bread. Suddenly he bit into a hard object and felt another of his molars crumble to pieces. Great was his surprise when he picked up, along with the fragments of this his second broken molar, another fine ring of gold, pearls and diamonds.

<  3  >
     Once more he noticed the initials J.X. Once more he returned the ring to Josermina Xofaina and as a reward received a third loaf of hard bread, in which he found a third ring that he again returned and for which lie obtained, as a reward, a fourth loaf of hard bread, in which ...

     From that fortunate day until the unlucky day of his death, the beggar lived happily and without financial problems. He only had to return the ring he found inside the bread every day.

 

[nusrat-diu]

Anton Chekhov
Grief

The turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for years past as a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A government post driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph posts, and the forest could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory, even the yoke above the horse's head could not be seen. The wretched, feeble little nag crawled slowly along. It took all its strength to drag its legs out of the snow and to tug with its head. The turner was in a hurry. He kept restlessly hopping up and down on the front seat and lashing the horse's back.

     "Don't cry, Matryona, ..." he muttered. "Have a little patience. Please God we shall reach the hospital, and in a trice it will be the right thing for you ... Pavel Ivanitch will give you some little drops, or tell them to bleed you; or maybe his honor will be pleased to rub you with some sort of spirit -- it'll ... draw it out of your side. Pavel Ivanitch will do his best. He will shout and stamp about, but he will do his best ... He is a nice gentleman, affable, God give him health! As soon as we get there he will dart out of his room and will begin calling me names. 'How? Why so?' he will cry. 'Why did you not come at the right time? I am not a dog to be hanging about waiting on you devils all day. Why did you not come in the morning? Go away! Get out of my sight. Come again to-morrow.' And I shall say: 'Mr. Doctor! Pavel Ivanitch! Your honor!' Get on, do! plague take you, you devil! Get on!"

<  2  >
     The turner lashed his nag, and without looking at the old woman went on muttering to himself:

     "'Your honor! It's true as before God ... Here's the Cross for you, I set off almost before it was light. How could I be here in time if the Lord ... The Mother of God ... is wroth, and has sent such a snowstorm? Kindly look for yourself ... Even a first-rate horse could not do it, while mine -- you can see for yourself -- is not a horse but a disgrace.' And Pavel Ivanitch will frown and shout: 'We know you! You always find some excuse! Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old! I'll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I shall say: 'Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen? My old woman is giving up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from tavern to tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take them, the taverns!' Then Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into the hospital, and I shall fall at his feet ... 'Pavel Ivanitch! Your honor, we thank you most humbly! Forgive us fools and anathemas, don't be hard on us peasants! We deserve a good kicking, whi le you graciously put yourself out and mess your feet in the snow!' And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as though he would like to hit me, and will say: 'You'd much better not be swilling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old woman instead of falling at my feet. You want a thrashing!' 'You are right there -- a thrashing, Pavel Ivanitch, strike me God! But how can we help bowing down at your feet if you are our benefactor, and a real father to us? Your honor! I give you my word, ... here as before God, ... you may spit in my face if I deceive you: as soon as my Matryona, this same here, is well again and restored to her natural condition, I'll make anything for your honor that you would like to order! A cigarette-case, if you like, of the best birchwood, ... balls for croquet, skittles of the most foreign pattern I can turn ... I will make anything for you! I won't take a farthing from you. In Moscow they would charge you four roubles for such a cigarette-case, but I won't take a farthing.' The doctor will laugh and say: 'Oh, all right, all right ... I see! But it's a pity you are a drunkard ... ' I know how to manage the gentry, old girl. There isn't a gentleman I couldn't talk to. Only God grant we don't get off the road. Oh, how it is blowing! One's eyes are full of snow."

<  3  >
     And the turner went on muttering endlessly. He prattled on mechanically to get a little relief from his depressing feelings. He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts and questions in his brain were even more numerous. Sorrow had come upon the turner unawares, unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now he could not get over it, could not recover himself. He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as though in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart. The careless idler and drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position of a busy man, weighed down by anxieties and haste, and even struggling with nature.

     The turner remembered that his trouble had begun the evening before. When he had come home yesterday evening, a little drunk as usual, and from long-established habit had begun swearing and shaking his fists, his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse as she had never looked at him before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes was that of a martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly fed; this time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, as saints in the holy pictures or dying people look. From that strange, evil look in her eyes the trouble had begun. The turner, stupefied with amazement, borrowed a horse from a neighbor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital in the hope that, by means of powders and ointments, Pavel Ivanitch would bring back his old woman's habitual expression.

     "I say, Matryona, ..." the turner muttered, "if Pavel Ivanitch asks you whether I beat you, say, 'Never!' and I never will beat you again. I swear it. And did I ever beat you out of spite? I just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for you. Some men wouldn't trouble, but here I am taking you ... I am doing my best. And the way it snows, the way it snows! Thy Will be done, O Lord! God grant we don't get off the road ... Does your side ache, Matryona, that you don't speak? I ask you, does your side ache?"

<  4  >
     It struck him as strange that the snow on his old woman's face was not melting; it was queer that the face itself looked somehow drawn, and had turned a pale gray, dingy waxen hue and had grown grave and solemn.

     "You are a fool!" muttered the turner ... "I tell you on my conscience, before God, ... and you go and ... Well, you are a fool! I have a good mind not to take you to Pavel Ivanitch!"

     The turner let the reins go and began thinking. He could not bring himself to look round at his old woman: he was frightened. He was afraid, too, of asking her a question and not getting an answer. At last, to make an end of uncertainty, without looking round he felt his old woman's cold hand. The lifted hand fell like a log.

     "She is dead, then! What a business!"

     And the turner cried. He was not so much sorry as annoyed. He thought how quickly everything passes in this world! His trouble had hardly begun when the final catastrophe had happened. He had not had time to live with his old woman, to show her he was sorry for her before she died. He had lived with her for forty years, but those forty years had passed by as it were in a fog. What with drunkenness, quarreling, and poverty, there had been no feeling of life. And, as though to spite him, his old woman died at the very time when he felt he was sorry for her, that he could not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully badly to her.

     "Why, she used to go the round of the village," he remembered. "I sent her out myself to beg for bread. What a business! She ought to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is I'll be bound she thinks I really was that sort of man ... Holy Mother! but where the devil am I driving? There's no need for a doctor now, but a burial. Turn back!"

<  5  >
     Grigory turned back and lashed the horse with all his might. The road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner's hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision was white and whirling again.

     "To live over again," thought the turner.

     He remembered that forty years ago Matryona had been young, handsome, merry, that she had come of a well-to-do family. They had married her to him because they had been attracted by his handicraft. All the essentials for a happy life had been there, but the trouble was that, just as he had got drunk after the wedding and lay sprawling on the stove, so he had gone on without waking up till now. His wedding he remembered, but of what happened after the wedding -- for the life of him he could remember nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, lain on the stove, and quarreled. Forty years had been wasted like that.

     The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to turn gray. It was getting dusk.

     "Where am I going?" the turner suddenly bethought him with a start. "I ought to be thinking of the burial, and I am on the way to the hospital ... It as is though I had gone crazy."

     Grigory turned round again, and again lashed his horse. The little nag strained its utmost and, with a snort, fell into a little trot. The turner lashed it on the back time after time ... A knocking was audible behind him, and though he did not look round, he knew it was the dead woman's head knocking against the sledge. And the snow kept turning darker and darker, the wind grew colder and more cutting ...

     "To live over again!" thought the turner. "I should get a new lathe, take orders, ... give the money to my old woman ..."

<  6  >
     And then he dropped the reins. He looked for them, tried to pick them up, but could not -- his hands would not work ...

     "It does not matter," he thought, "the horse will go of itself, it knows the way. I might have a little sleep now ... Before the funeral or the requiem it would be as well to get a little rest ..."

     The turner closed his eyes and dozed. A little later he heard the horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him something dark like a hut or a haystack ...

     He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep.

     He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew how things should be done.

     "A requiem, brothers, for my old woman," he said. "The priest should be told ..."

     "Oh, all right, all right; lie down," a voice cut him short.

     "Pavel Ivanitch!" the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before him. "Your honor, benefactor! "

     He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him.

     "Your honor, where are my legs, where are my arms!"

     "Say good-by to your arms and legs ... They've been frozen off. Come, come! ... What are you crying for ? You've lived your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it -- that's enough for you! ..."

<  7  >
     "I am grieving ... Graciously forgive me! If I could have another five or six years! ..."

     "What for?"

     "The horse isn't mine, I must give it back ... I must bury my old woman ... How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I'll turn you croquet balls ..."

     The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over with the turner.

 

[nusrat-diu]

Nels Schifano
Three Letters
It was autumn. Although still afternoon the journey had been spent peering at slowly moving red lights through clouds of condensing exhaust and the intermittent slip-slip of wipers. Now as she turned off the ignition darkness gathered silently around her. She walked head down, hood up, feeling plastic handles moulding themselves around her fingers, the carrier bag spinning one way then the next as it clipped against her leg. The pavement was thick with the slippery brown mulch of fallen leaves and the smell of bonfires wafted across the common. A thin mist clung around the streetlights producing a shifting yellow gas. Sounds were muffled and movements lethargic. Cars slipped slowly by on a film of dirty water. At her gate she delayed, unwilling to break the stillness with squeaking hinges; not yet teatime and the city was being put to sleep.

     The terrace before her hugged the curve of the road tumbling erratically down the hill and into the gloom. Bending around the edges of her vision she was conscious of curtains being swished closed, stone faces bathed by the grey light of televisions, broken roof tiles, satellite dishes, bay windows, the whole higgledy-piggledy collection of guttering and skylights. For a moment her home was a stranger, a simple compartment in this huge connected structure.

     She rattled the key into the lock, tilting it to the particular angle that would allow it to catch. She stepped inside, her hand brushing the light switch as she closed the door behind her. The softly lit warmth of the interior walls were a welcome contrast to the dark slimy surfaces of the outside. Two elderly neighbours warmed the house from the sides and soon she would hear the comforting noises of the boiler rousing itself into life.

     She kept her mind occupied by these happy details of returning home as she walked along the hall and into the kitchen. She lifted the carrier bag onto the worktop and reached for the kettle. Standing in the centre of the room, still in her anorak, she listened to the sound of the water boil and felt the house adjust itself to her presence. Now she returned at all times of the day she sometimes sensed she had caught it unawares. What ghosts that had been running through rooms were now slipping reluctantly back into walls? While its inhabitants had moved the house stayed still, preserving pockets of time in dusty corners. The blue-tak tears on bedroom walls, a water-colour sun and stick man hiding behind a fitted wardrobe, a dent in a table, a crack in a mirror, were all passing moments etched into the physical world, like voices pressed into vinyl.

<  2  >
     Steam began to rise vertically to the ceiling where it changed direction aware of the presence of some subtle draft (or draft of some subtle presence). Through the window she could see the outline of the narrow garden, the fuzzy grey shapes of a rusting climbing frame and overflowing compost heap. Along one side a scruffy fence lent drunkenly one way then the other, while a brutally straight line of six-foot high boards marked the other side of the territory. What further anti-cat measures (minefields, tripwires perhaps) lay waiting beyond? As if summoned by her thoughts Rahel, green eyes and a flicking tail, appeared on the window ledge, her silent meows making small circles of condensation. Smiling, she unlocked the door. The cat padded in, figures of eight around her feet represented by muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor. The kettle worked itself towards a crescendo, beads of perspiration appeared on its sides and it shook violently unable to contain the bubbling pressure inside. Abruptly it finished, sat back on the filament and turned itself off.

     She reached up to the top cupboards for the coffee jar and bent down for those that contained the mugs. Here she paused, confused by the vast number of assorted cup, mugs and beakers that stared blankly back at her. Why did she have so many? Where had they come from? She sighed as she straightened pulling out a standard shaped mug with handle; colour - light blue; design - three letters emblazoned in gold, S U E.

     She took off her coat and laid it over the back of the oak kitchen chair and sat down. She let her feet slip out of her shoes and raised them onto the fitted bench across the other side of the table. Above the bench were shelves supporting decorative plates in wire stands, a Charles and Diana mug (more mugs!), and a collection of photographs showing either madly grinning or defiantly sulky children (both on the verge of crying). As she looked the image of a growing family seemed to slowly recede to reveal the image of a shrinking woman.

<  3  >
     There was the sudden sound of water flooding into a drain as somewhere nearby a plug was pulled from a sink, a toilet was flushed or maybe a washing machine emptied itself and she realised that her coffee had gone cold. She moved to the sink and ran the hot water. Staring out into darkness she listened to the succession of far-off bangs and shudders from the network of pipes. Bathed in yellow light hovering over the gloom of the garden she looked in at a woman repeatedly working a tea towel around the inside of a mug. Who was she? Why was she so miserable?

     She shook herself and took out the plug. Slipped away again into nothing time (that time that flowed into the gaps between the things you did). Wouldn't a wasted minute become a wasted hour, wasted hours become wasted days? Where could she be now if she hadn't been doing, what? - making tea, sitting in traffic jams, reading the local paper, standing in a supermarket queue. Best avoided, the thought of her life draining into these moments.

     She unpacked the carrier bag. She put away the milk, the orange, the biscuits and the cat food, then struggled to slide the two pizza's into an already crowded freezer spraying tiny shards of ice across the floor. An overflowing collection of polythene bags scrunched inside other polythene bags in the bottom of a cupboard was her commitment to recycling. When it was opened a white plastic avalanche slid towards her. She threw in the latest addition and slammed the door. A lone bag made a break for freedom and buoyed by the swish of air it lifted across the room like a jellyfish. Two pairs of eyes followed its progress over the spice rack and breadboard until it was caught on a bottle of olive oil.

     The oak bench was not just a foot rest. She had made this discovery during a rigorous cleaning session one New Year. Under the lip of the removable cushioned seat she had found a small catch, rusty enough to break two nails. Eventually it yielded and raised to reveal a dark, hollow chest. Despite a few moments when her heartbeat seemed to fill the house, it proved to contain nothing more exciting than a pile of old newspapers - more dirtiness to clean. It was, she decided, an ideal place to store tablecloths and tea towels, but steadily it began to swallow bedding, pillowcases and blankets of various sorts. Really, it was ridiculous to think that no one else was aware of its existence (was she the only one ever to change a bed, lay a table?) Still, she always thought of it as hers, and, when alone in the house, she opened it, she experienced a flush of childish excitement. She felt it rise now as her fingers fumbled beneath soft layers of folded cotton searching for the sharp cold of a shiny metal toffee tin.

<  4  >
     She put the tin on the table. Inside lay a medal from the Polish Airforce; a commemorative coin; a pebble taken from Ilfracomb beach in 1978 (could she really remember the heavy heat of that day or did she need the proof of the pebble to tell her she had been there); a present bought but never given; and inside a neatly folded bag, three envelopes. She glanced around the room, from somewhere inside a wall a pipe clanked - the house clearing its throat - and took out the top envelope.

     An antelope leapt across a colourful stamp. It looked startled as antelopes often do caught in the sights of the black postmark. The paper inside was thick and cream-coloured, it had a blue letterhead and the date in the top right hand corner was July 2000. As she let her eyes wander over the page she noticed it was just a little crumpled, stiff in places, as if it had been wetted then dried.

*

This must be something of a surprise. If, that is, this letter gets to you. I remembered your address, of course, but then it suddenly struck me that maybe you had moved and I didn't know and anyway the post round here isn't exactly reliable. So perhaps I am only writing a letter to myself.

     Really now that I've started I can't think what it was I wanted to say. I think it was just the act of writing that was important, just to feel as if I was still in contact with things, although I guess a blank piece of paper in an envelope would have seemed a little strange.

     I've really no need to ask how things are with you. It all seems to have worked out pretty much as you planned. But still I hope you are both healthy and happy.

     I am afraid I've done nothing very exciting to tell you about. Here is just an endless succession of long boring tasks, and then there's the heat and the clouds of flies that rise from the river and make everything twice as hard. But this evening as I washed and dried my clothes suddenly there was this feeling of satisfaction. Strange, five months of toil and worry then calm descends as welcome and unexpected as an ice-cream van clattering through the bush.

<  5  >
     Maybe that's why I am writing this letter. Perhaps it's thinking about England in the summer, perhaps it's the sounds of the river at night but my mind wandered back to the place of long afternoons, listening to Pink Moon and Lay Lady Lay. Can you still find a way back to the taste of cheap wine, the feel of grass between your fingers and a world that was all shimmering reflections?

     All those people disappeared into the world. How would they be recognised now - perhaps only by the sound of their laughter?

     I'm afraid I once damaged the environment in your name and took a penknife to the willow we used to sit by. I can remember wondering if the bark would ever grow back. If you ever find yourself driving past one weekend . . . Well perhaps not, it's probably so sadly different. But I know your name will still be there, carved in the memory of a tree.

*

She re-folded the letter and tapped it several times against her top lip. From the hall the clock calling out the quarter hour, then a moment of stillness - time stalling - before, faintly, the clock in her study responded.

     She took out the next envelope. While her fingers searched for the flap she looked at the Queen's silver silhouette. The letter was written on paper so white and thin that as her gaze fell across it she saw it as a shade of blue. The date was April 1976.

*

Do I remember that September afternoon when I first met you? Is it possible to remember the slide into sleep or the hypnotist's fingers on your eyelids? I only know that it happened because at some stage I awoke.

     Some things are clear, the lucid fragments of a dream, a conversation over the phone one Easter. We both felt down because I was working in a stuffy shop and you in a sorting office. I hated it and asked you how it was that time moved so slowly. It's okay, you said, it doesn't matter, because it will end and time passed is all the same, and anyway, in the end it's not time that you're left with.

<  6  >
     You told me to go look for happiness and bring some back when I found it. But you can't bank happiness. You can't keep it for when you need it and you cannot give to someone else simply by having it yourself.

     I thought I would be content to watch the river flow past and drift away on the scent of water lilies. I watched days become nights and nights gently give way to days, believing I was shedding my cares when really I was storing regrets. Now I know that reading is dreaming, that dreaming is sleeping and thought inaction. When I wake I find that all I have left is thoughts of you.

*

The noise of the cat jumping clumsily onto her lap, the feeling of her pressing up and down with alternate paws, claws snagging loops of cotton.

     This time the silhouette is not the Queen's but that of Nehru, a white head against an orange background. The stamp is stuck on at an odd angle (but still stuck after all this time!) and he stares down at the scraggly lines of a familiar address. The letter itself is written on a school child's lined paper, as her eyes run down the page they linger on the date, Nov. 1968 and the dappling of yellow blotches. What were they? Had they always been there?

*

I still can't believe you decided to go. Why go back to the grey, the dirt, the noise, the rush? There is a lifetime to do those things. I know you chase that dream of yours, but the dream is so sweetly deferred here. Here I feel as if I am absorbing the sunshine and serenity.

     Since you left we moved further east where the earth here has a reddish tinge and so does the food. Today we met a group of Americans. We got a ride on the roof of their van and helped them collect firewood. They say there is an old man who sells the beads you wanted from the front of his hut, and eight miles of white sand.

<  7  >
     I am writing this in a flickering of orange and blackness. This is the best time, talking and reading, the world melting away into words, although sometimes a phrase is so beautiful I have to walk around a little just to let them settle in. One of these made me think of you. 'Do that which makes you happy to do, and you will do right.'

*

The freezer's cooling mechanism rattled, then fell silent, and she realised that she hadn't been aware of the noise it was making. In its absence the air in the house seemed to hang with that same question; how would her life have been if she had managed to send just one of them? But the air received no answers and went back to its lazy circulation.

     In time she would fold the letter away and place it back in the envelope, place the envelopes back into the bag, the bag back into the tin and the tin into the trunk. She would cover it with layers of cloth and place down the seat and lock the catch. But now she just sat for a moment, the noise of the cat's contented breathing filling the house.

[nusrat-diu]

Ursula Wills-Jones
The Wicker Husband

Once upon a time, there was an ugly girl. She was short and dumpy, had one leg a bit shorter than the other, and her eyebrows met in the middle. The ugly girl gutted fish for a living, so her hands smelt funny and her dress was covered in scales. She had no mother or brother, no father, sister, or any friends. She lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of the village, and she never complained.

     One by one, the village girls married the local lads, and up the path to the church they'd prance, smiling all the way. At the weddings, the ugly girl always stood at the back of the church, smelling slightly of brine. The village women gossiped about the ugly girl. They wondered what she did with the money she earnt. The ugly girl never bought a new frock, never made repairs to the house, and never drank in the village tavern.

     Now, it so happened that outside the village, in a great damp swamp, lived an old basket-maker who was famed for the quality of his work. One day the old basket-maker heard a knock on his door. When he opened it, the ugly girl stood there. In her hand, she held six gold coins.

     'I want you to make me a husband,' she said.

     'Come back in a month,' he replied.

     Well, the old basket-maker was greatly moved that the ugly girl had entrusted him with such an important task. He resolved to make her the best husband he could. He made the wicker husband broad of shoulder and long of leg, and all the other things women like. He made him strong of arm and elegant of neck, and his brows were wide and well-spaced. His hair was a fine dark brown, his eyes a greenish hazel.

     When the day came, the ugly girl knocked on the basket-maker's door.

     'He says today is too soon. He will be in the church tomorrow, at ten,' said the basket-maker. The ugly girl went away, and spent the day scraping scales from her dress.

<  2  >
     Later that night, there was a knock on the door of the village tailor. When the tailor opened it, the wicker husband stood outside.

     'Lend me a suit,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church naked.'

     'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the tailor, and ran out the back door.

     The tailor's wife came out, wiping her hands. 'What's going on?' she said.

     'Lend me a suit,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I cannot go to my wedding naked.'

     The tailor's wife gave him a suit, and slammed the door in his face.

     Next, there was a knock on the door of the village shoe-maker. When the shoe-maker opened it, the wicker husband stood there.

     'Lend me some shoes,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church barefoot.'

     'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the shoe-maker, and he ran out the back door.

     The shoe-maker's wife came out, her hands trembling.

     'What do you want?' she said.

     'Lend me some shoes,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to my wedding barefoot.'

     The shoe-maker's wife gave him a pair of shoes, and slammed the door in his face. Next, the wicker husband went to the village inn.

     'Give me a drink,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I wish to celebrate.'

     'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the inn-keeper and all his customers, and out they ran. The poor wicker husband went behind the bar, and poured himself a drink.

     When the ugly girl got to church in the morning, she was mighty pleased to find her husband so handsome, and so well turned-out.

<  3  >
When the couple had enjoyed their first night of marriage, the wicker husband said to his wife: 'This bed is broken. Bring me a chisel: I will fix it.'

     So like a good husband, he began to fix the bed. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she came back at the end of the day, the wicker husband looked at her, and said: 'I was made to be with you.'

     When the couple had enjoyed their second night of marriage, the wicker husband said: 'This roof is leaky. Bring me a ladder: I will fix it.'

     So, like a good husband, he climbed up and began to fix the thatch. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she returned in the evening, the wicker husband looked at his wife, and said: 'Without you, I should never have seen the sun on the water, or the clouds in the sky.'

     When the couple had enjoyed their third night of marriage, the ugly girl got ready to out. 'The chimney needs cleaning,' she said, hopefully, 'And the fire could be laid...' But at this, the wicker husband - she was just beginning to learn his expressions - looked completely terrified. From this, the ugly girl came to understand that there are some things you cannot ask a man to do, even if he is very kind.

     Over the weeks, the villagers began to notice a change in the ugly girl. If one of her legs was still shorter than the other, her hips moved with a swing that didn't please them. If she still smelt funny, she sang while she gutted the fish. She bought a new frock and wore flowers in her hair. Even her eyebrows no longer met in the middle: the wicker husband had pulled them out with his strong, withied fingers. When the villagers passed the ugly girl's house, they saw it had been painted anew, the windows sparkled, and the door no longer hung askew. You might think that all these changes pleased the villagers, but oh no. Instead, wives pointed out to husbands that their doors needed fixing, and why didn't they offer? The men retorted that maybe if their wives made an effort with new frocks and flowers in their hair, then maybe they'd feel like fixing the house, and everybody grumbled and cursed each other, but secretly, in their hearts, they blamed the ugly girl and her husband.

<  4  >
     As to the ugly girl, she didn't notice all the jealousy. She was too busy growing accustomed to married life, and was finding that the advantages of a wicker husband outweighed his few shortcomings. The wicker husband didn't eat, and never complained that his dinner was late. He only drank water, the muddier the better. She was a little sad that she could not cook him dinner like an ordinary man, and watch him while he ate. In the cold nights, she hoped they would sit together close to the fire, but he preferred the darkness, far from the flames. The ugly girl got in the habit of calling across the room all the things she had to say to him. As winter turned to spring, and rain pelted down, the wicker husband became a little mouldy, and the ugly girl had to scrub him down with a brush and a bottle of vinegar. Spring turned to summer, and June was very dry. The wicker husband complained of stiffness in his joints, and spent the hottest hour of the day lying in the stream. The ugly girl took her fish-gutting, and sat on the bank, keeping him company.

     Eventually the villagers were too ridden with curiosity to stand it any longer. There was a wedding in the village: the ugly girl and her husband were invited. At the wedding, there was music and dancing, and food and wine. As the musicians struck up, the wicker husband and the ugly girl went to dance. The villagers could not help staring: the wicker husband moved so fine. He lifted his dumpy wife like she was nought but a feather, and swung her round and round. He swayed and shimmered; he was elegant, he was graceful. As for the ugly girl: she was in heaven.

     The women began to whisper behind their hands. Now, the blacksmith's wife was boldest, and she resolved to ask the wicker husband to dance. When the music paused she went towards the couple. The ugly girl was sitting in the wicker husband's lap, so he creaked a little. The blacksmith's wife was about to tap the wicker husband on the shoulder, but his arms were wrapped round the ugly girl.

<  5  >
     'You are the only reason that I live and breathe,' the wicker husband said to his wife.

     The blacksmith's wife heard what he said, and went off, sulking. The next day there were many frayed tempers in the village.

     'You've got two left feet!' shouted the shoe-maker's wife at her husband.

     'You never tell me anything nice!' yelled the blacksmith's wife.

     'All you do is look at other women!' shouted the baker's wife, though how she knew was a mystery, as she'd done nothing but stare at the wicker husband all night. The husbands fled their homes and congregated in the tavern.

     'T'aint right,' they muttered, 'T'isn't natural.'

     'E's showing us up.'

     'Painting doors.'

     'Fixing thatch.'

     'Murmuring sweet nothings.'

     'Dancing!' muttered the blacksmith, and they all spat.

     'He's not really a man,' muttered the baker. 'An abomination!'

     'He don't eat.'

     'He don't grumble.'

     'He don't even fart,' added the tailor, gloomily.

     The men shook their heads, and agreed that it couldn't go on.

     Meanwhile the women congregated in each other's kitchens.

     'It's not right,' they muttered. 'Why does she deserve him?'

     'It's an enchantment,' they whispered. 'She bewitched him.'

     'She'll be onto our husbands next, I expect,' said the baker's wife. 'We should be careful.'

     'She needs to be brought down a peg or two.'

     'Fancies that she's better than the rest of us, I reckon.'

     'Flowers in her hair!!'

<  6  >
     'Did you see her dancing?'

     And they all agreed that it couldn't go on.

     One day the wicker husband was on his way back from checking the fish-traps, when he was accosted by the baker.

     'Hello,' said the baker. The wicker husband was a little surprised: the baker never bothered to speak to him. 'You made an impression the other night.'

     'I did?' said the wicker husband.

     'Oh yes,' continued the baker. 'The women are all aflutter. Don't you ever think - well...'

     'What?' said the wicker husband, completely confused.

     'Man like you,' said the baker. 'Could do well for himself. A lot of opportunities...' He leaned forward, so the wicker husband recoiled. The baker's breath smelt of dough, which he found unpleasant. 'Butcher's wife,' added the baker meaningfully. 'Very taken. I know for a fact that he's not at home. Gone to visit his brother in the city. Why don't you go round?'

     'I can't,' said the wicker husband. 'My wife's waiting for me at home.' And he strode off, up the lane. The baker went home, annoyed.

     Now the wicker husband, who was too trusting, thought less of this of this than he should, and did not warn his wife that trouble was brewing. About a week later, the ugly girl was picking berries in the hedgerow, when the tailor's wife sidled up. Her own basket was empty, which made the ugly girl suspicious.

     'My dear!' cried the tailor's wife, fluttering her hands.

     'What d'you want?' said the ugly girl.

     The tailor's wife wiped away a fake tear, and looked in both directions. 'My dear,' she whispered. 'I'm only here to warn you. Your husband - he's been seen with other women.'

     'What other women?' said the ugly girl.

<  7  >
     The tailor's wife fluttered her hands. This wasn't going as she intended. 'My dear, you can't trust men. They're all the same. And you can't expect - a man like him, and a woman like you - frankly -'

     The ugly girl was so angry that she hit the tailor's wife with her basket, and ran off, up the lane. The ugly girl went home, and - knowing more of cruelty than her husband did - thought on this too much and too long. But she did not want to upset her husband, so she said nothing.

     The tailor's wife came home fuming, with scratches all over her face. That night, the wives and husbands of the village all agreed - for once - that something drastic had to be done.

 

A few days later the old basket-maker heard a knocking at his door. When he opened it, the villagers stood outside. Right on cue, the tailor's wife began to weep, pitifully.

     'What's the matter?' said the old basket-maker.

     'She's childless,' said the baker's wife, sniffing.

     'Not a son,' said the tailor, sadly.

     'Or a daughter.'

     'No-one to comfort them in their old age,' added the butcher.

     'It's breaking their hearts,' went on the baker.

     'So we've come to ask -'

     'If you'll make us a baby. Out of wicker.'

     And they held out a bag of gold.

     'Very well,' said the old basket-maker. 'Come back in a month.'

     Well, one dusky day in autumn, the ugly girl was sitting by the fire, when there came a knock at the door. The wicker husband opened it. Outside, stood the villagers. The tailor's wife bore a bundle in her arms, and the bundle began to whimper.

<  8  >
     'What's that?' said the ugly girl.

     'This is all your fault,' hissed the butcher, pointing at the wicker husband.

     'Look what you've done!' shouted the baker.

     'It's an abomination,' sneered the inn-keeper. 'Not even human!'

     The tailor pulled away the blanket. The ugly girl saw that the baby was made of wicker. It had the same shaped nose, the same green eyes that her husband did.

     'Tell me it's not true!' she cried.

     But the wicker husband said nothing. He just stared at the baby. He had never seen one of his own kind before, and now - his heart filled up with tenderness. When the ugly girl saw this on his face, a great cloud of bitterness came upon her. She sank to the floor, moaning.

     'Filthy, foul, creature!' cried the tailor. 'I should burn it!' He seized the baby, and made to fling it into the blaze. At this, the wicker husband let out a yell. Forward he leapt.

     The ugly girl let out a terrible cry. She took the lamp, and flung it straight at her husband. The lamp burst in shards of glass. Oil went everywhere. Flames began to lick at the wicker husband's chest, up his neck, into his face. He tried to beat at the flames, but his fingers grew oily, and burst into fire. Out he ran, shrieking, and plunged into the river.

     'Well, that worked well,' said the butcher, in a satisfied manner.

     The villagers did not spare a second glance for the ugly girl, but went home again to their dinners. On the way, the tailor's wife threw the wicker baby in the ditch. She stamped on its face. 'Ugh,' she said. 'Horrible thing.'

     The next day the ugly girl wandered the highways, weeping, her face smeared in ashes.

<  9  >
     'Have you seen my husband?' she asked passing travellers, but they saw madness in her eyes, and spurred their horses on. Dusk fell. Stumbling home, scarce knowing where she was, the ugly girl heard a sound in the ditch. Kneeling, she found the wicker baby. It wailed and thrashed, and held up its hands. The ugly girl saw in its face her husband's eyes, and her husband's nose. She coddled it to her chest and took it home.

     Now, the old basket maker knew nothing of all this. One day, the old man took it into his head to see how his creations were faring. He walked into town, and knocked on the tailor's door. The wife answered.

     'How is the baby?' he said.

     'Oh that,' she said. 'It died.' And she shut the door in his face. The old basket-maker walked on, till he came to the ugly girl's place. The door was closed, the garden untended, and dirt smeared the windows. The old basket-maker knocked on the door. No-one answered, though he waited a very long time.

     The old-basket maker went home, disheartened. He was walking the long dark road into the swamp, when he heard something in the rushes. At first he was afraid: he wrapped his scarf closer round his face. But the thing seemed to follow him. From time to time, it groaned.

     'Who's there?' called the old man.

     Out onto the roadway staggered the most broken and bedraggled, the most pathetic and pitiful thing. The old basket-maker stared at what was left of the wicker husband: his hands consumed by fire, his face equally gone. Dark pits of scorched wood marred his chest. Where he had burnt, he had started to rot.

     'What have they done to my children?' cried the old basket-maker.

     The wicker husband said nothing: he had lost his tongue.

     The old basket-maker took the wicker husband home. As daylight came, the old basket-maker sat down to repair him. But as he worked, his heart grew hot with anger.

<  10  >
     'I made you, but I failed you,' he said. 'I will not send you there again.'

     Eventually, the wicker husband looked as good as new, though the smell of burning still clung. But as the days passed, a damp black mould began to grow on him. The old basket-maker pulled out the rotting withies and replaced them. But it seemed useless: the wicker husband rotted from the inside, outwards.

     At last, the old basket-maker saw there was nothing else to be done. He took up his travelling cloak, set out at night, and passed through the village. He came to the ugly girl's house. In the garden, wreathed in filth, stood the ugly girl, cuddling a child. She was singing the saddest lullaby he had ever heard. The old basket-maker saw that the child was the one he'd made, and his heart softened a little. He stepped out of the shadows.

     'Why do you keep the baby,' he said, 'when you cast your husband from home?'

     The ugly girl cried out, to hear someone speak to her.

     'It is all I have left of my husband,' she said at last. 'Though it is proof he betrayed me, I could not leave it in the ditch to die.'

     'You are a fool,' he said. 'It was I that made the child. Your husband is innocent.'

     At this, the ugly girl let out a cry, and ran towards the river. But old basket-maker caught her arm. 'Wait - I have something to show you,' he said.

     The ugly girl walked behind him, through the swamp where the water sucked and burbled, carrying the baby. As the sun rose, she saw that its features were only those of the old basket-maker, who, like any maker, had passed down his face to his creations.

     When they came to the dwelling, the ugly girl opened the door, and saw her husband, sitting in darkness.

<  11  >
     'It cannot be you,' she said. 'You are dead. I know: I killed you myself.'

     'I was made for you alone,' said the wicker husband, 'But you threw me away.'

     The ugly girl let out a cry so loud, birds surfaced from the marches for miles around, and threw herself at her husband's feet.

 

A few days later, the villagers were surprised to see the old basket-maker standing outside the church.

     'I have something to say,' he said. 'Soon I will retire. But first, I am making my masterwork - a woman made of wicker. If you want her, you can have her. But you must bring me a gift for my retirement. Whoever brings me the best gift can have the wicker woman.'

     Then he turned round and went back to the swamp.

     Behind him, the villagers began to whisper. Hadn't the wicker husband been tall and graceful? Hadn't he been a hard worker? Hadn't he been handsome, and eager to please his wife?

     Next day, the entire village denied any interest in the wicker lady, but secretly began to plan. Men eyed up prize cows; women sneaked open jewellery boxes.

     'That wicker husband worked like a slave, and never even ate,' said the shoe-maker's wife to her husband. 'Get me the wicker woman as a servant, I'll live like a lady, never lift a finger.'

     'That wicker husband never quarrelled with anyone, never even raised his voice. Not like you, you old fishwife,' the inn-keeper said to his wife.

     'That wicker husband never tired, and never had a headache,' said the butcher to the baker. 'Imagine...!'

     'Lend me a shilling, cousin,' said the shoe-maker's wife. 'I need a new petticoat.'

     'I can't,' lied the blacksmith's wife. 'I spent it on medicine. The child was very sick.'

<  12  >
     'I need that back-rent you owe me,' said the butcher, who owned the tailor's house.

     'Been a very bad season in the tailoring trade,' muttered the tailor. 'You'll get it soon.'

     The butcher went into town, hired a lawyer, and got the tailor evicted from his house. The tailor and his wife had to go and live in the shoe-maker's shed.

     'But what are you going to do with the empty house?' asked the butcher's wife.

     'Nothing,' said the butcher, who thought the place would do admirably to keep a mistress. The butcher's wife and the tailor's wife had a fight in the market, and went home with black eyes. In the tavern, no-one spoke, but only eyed each other, suspiciously. The lawyer was still in town. Rumour had it that the tailor's wife was suing for divorce: the inn-keeper's wife had her husband arrested after she found the stairs had been greased. In short, the fields went uncut, the cows went unmilked, ovens uncleaned: the village was obsessed.

     When the day came, the old basket-maker came to town, and sat on the churchyard wall. The villagers brought their gifts. First the tailor, who'd made a luxurious coat. Next the miller, bringing twelve sacks of grain. The baker made the most extravagant cake; the carpenter brought a table and chairs, the carter a good strong horse. The blacksmith's wife staggered up with a cheese the size of a millwheel. Her cousin, the tailor's wife, arrived with a bag of gold.

     'Where d'you get that, wife?' said her husband, amazed.

     'Never you mind,' she snapped.

     The inn-keeper's wife wasn't there: she'd slipped while climbing the stairs.

     Last to come was the butcher. He'd really outdone the others: two oxen, four cows, and a dozen sheep.

     The old-basket maker looked around him. 'Well,' he said. 'I think the prize goes to... the butcher. I'll just take these and be back, with the wicker lady.'

<  13  >
     The butcher was so pleased, spittle ran from his mouth.

     'Can I have my grain back?' said the miller.

     'No no,' said the old man. 'That wasn't the bargain.' And he began to load all the goods onto the horse. The villagers would have fallen on each other, fighting, but they were so desperate to see the wicker lady, they just stood there, to wait.

     It was dusk by the time the basket-maker returned. The wicker woman was seated on the horse, shrouded in a cloak, veiled like a bride. From under the cloak, white flowers fell. As she passed the villagers, a most marvellous smell drifted down.

     The butcher stood outside the tailor's old house. He'd locked his wife in the coal cellar in preparation.

     The old basket-maker held out a hand, and helped the lady dismount. The butcher smelt her fragrance. From under the veil, he thought he saw her give him a saucy glance. He was so excited, he hopped from foot to foot.

     The wicker lady lifted her veil: she took off her cloak. The butcher stared at her. The wicker lady was short of stature and twisted of limb, her face was dark and rough. But worse than that - from head to foot, she was covered in thorns.

     'What have you done?' shrieked the butcher.

     'Ah,' said the old basket-maker. 'The wicker husband was made of willow. Willow is the kindest of trees: tall, elegant, pliable, of much assistance in easing pain. But I saw that you did not like him. Therefore I made you the wicker lady from blackthorn. Blackthorn is cold, hard, and thorny - it will not be killed, either by fire or frost.'

     The villagers would have fallen on the old basket-maker there and then, had not the wicker lady stepped forward. She seized hold of the butcher and reached up to kiss him. The butcher let out a howl. When he pulled his lips away, they were shredded and tattered: blood ran down his chin. Then, with a bang, the butcher's wife broke out of the coal cellar, and ran down the road. Seeing the wicker lady kissing her husband, she screamed, and fell on her. The two of them rolled in the gutter, howling and scratching.

<  14  >
     Just then, the lawyer piped up. 'Didn't you check the details first?' he said. 'It's very important. You should always check the small print.'

     The men of the village took their butcher's knives and pitchforks and tailoring shears, and chased the lawyer out of town. When they'd run out of breath, they stopped.

     'That old fraud the basket-maker,' said the baker. 'He tricked us.'

     So they turned round and began to go back in the other direction, on the road into the swamp. In the darkness they stumbled and squelched, lost their way and nearly drowned. It was light by the time they came to the old basket-maker's dwelling, but the old basket-maker, the wicker husband, the ugly girl and the baby, as well as all the villagers' goods, had already upped, and gone.

[nusrat-diu]

 
 


Esther Claes
The Star

When the world started to end, you were ashamed of yourself for weeping bitterly in your bedroom for an entire day. You saw the president crying and begging on TV and it sent you into a panic. You lay in bed with the blankets pulled up to your nose, crying, refusing to answer the door when the maid, your manager, your assistant, and finally your parents begged you to come out.

     After twenty-four hours, your father took the door off its hinges and dragged you down the stairs into your sunken living room with the white carpet and leather couches. You kicked and screamed until he had to pick you up and carry you over his shoulder. You called him a motherer and threatened to take back the Mercedes you'd purchased for him last Christmas.

     Your mother sat solemnly on the couch, her hands clenched into fists on top of the newspaper in her lap. She said it was all over.

     You glowered and glared; you asked what the hell is happening, and will you still be on the talk show circuit next month?

     The television stations are all color bars and static. Your father says that the talk shows are all gone, and not to worry. He tells you that there are far more important things happening right now. How can you not worry? You were supposed to debut your new fragrance next month to coincide with the release of your latest album.

     Your mother tells you that the album isn't going to happen, and she clenches her fists even tighter than before. You can't believe what she's saying. How can she say that? There will always be an album, and there will always be television. You tell your parents they're idiots, and that this will all blow over in a few days, as soon as they replace that pussy of a president.

     Your mother says that the world is ending. They dropped bombs, she says darkly.

     There are diseases and radiation poisoning spreading all over the country, your father says.

<  2  >
     Not in LA you shout defiantly.

     Your mother holds up the newspapers one at a time. WAR is on the cover of each one, along with speculations on the doomed fate of the country, including LA. You feel sick, you're dizzy. You want to know what you did to deserve this, and how anyone could possibly do such a thing before you had a chance to accomplish the things that mean so much to you.

*

Two days later, your mother and father are discussing survival, and filling jugs with water from the tap just in case. Your father is worried about the electricity holding out. You sit in the living room wondering why all the servants quit the day before, and if your assistant is ever going to call you back. The only connection to the outside world is the radio, and it's hard to get real information between the crying and praying on almost every channel. On the pop station, the dj says over and over that it's only a matter of time. Your father tells you to switch to the AM band because they have more sense on AM, goddammit.

     You hear reports of death and destruction all over the country, and all you can think is that you hope LA is okay. Even after reports of people dead in their cars, you imagine Rodeo Drive the same as it ever was, untouched by nasty things like war, sickness and death. How could a place a beautiful as Hollywood ever be destroyed? No one messes with LA, you say, and your father won't look you in the eye.

     When the electricity goes out that night, your eyes fill with frustrated tears, and you light the scented candles you'd been saving for a special occasion. The radio runs on batteries, but they won't last long. Your father tells you to conserve them, and stop leaving the radio on so much. You tell him to shut up, and that you can afford thousands of batteries. The man on the radio says that much of the east coast is destroyed, along with Detroit and Chicago. He says that the radiation is coming west at an alarming rate, and you wish you had a map so you'd know what that meant. Instead of worrying, you get out that limited edition pink nail polish and give yourself a pedicure. It isn't until you spill the bottle, and nail polish gets all over the carpet that you realize you can't stop crying.

<  3  >
     In the morning, your dad tells you that your mother is very sick, and he doesn't feel so well himself. You roll your eyes and tell them to take some pepto, but on the inside, you can't deal with the possibility of them dying and leaving you alone, so you go back to your room and sit in front of the window. Your yard looks the same. There is no death and destruction on your property, but you wonder what's changed outside of your front gates.

     In the afternoon, you bring your four gold records and three Grammy awards up to your room so you can look at them. Your finger traces your name on the awards over and over, and you can't comprehend how someone who has accomplished so much in such a short time should be allowed to go through something as horrible as this. You're a star, for God's sake, you deserve better than this.

     Your father is calling your name in the hall. He sounds sick. His voice breaks repeatedly, and he's gagging between words. You don't want him to throw up on the carpet in the hall, but you keep your mouth shut. If he does, the cleaning woman will take care of it tomorrow. You pull the blankets up to your chin and close your eyes. Your father's voice sounds farther and farther away now as you clutch the Grammy close to your chest and squeeze your eyes shut.

     Tomorrow you'll wake up and things will be better. Tomorrow you'll be on the Tonight Show, and be as charming as ever. Tomorrow your agent will apologize for not calling. Tomorrow you'll still be a star.

 

[nusrat-diu]

Simon Collings
Do You Speak English?
Manuel had passed the fish on his way up the road. It was eighteen to twenty inches long and its silvery scales were covered with dirt. The gill flaps opened like two gash wounds on the sides of its head as it thrashed helplessly in the gutter. Next to it a boy leaned against the railings, his rod and line dangling out over the floating garbage and the stream of brown, stinking waste which trickled from a pipe in the wall below. The boy wore a faded pair of football shorts. He was perhaps nine or ten years old, barefoot and grubby, and his skin was marked with insect bites.

     The fish gasped, then made one last convulsive leap, throwing itself in the direction of the river, and landed on the pavement with a thud. There it lay motionless for a moment, exhausted no doubt by the effort. The boy looked down at it, turned and kicked it back into the gutter.

     Manuel had not paid much attention to the fish as he was preoccupied. He had just been to look at an apartment and he was considering how he could afford the rent. Accommodation was hard to find in the city and a place like this didn't come up very often. The apartment he and his wife were currently living in was so small their six-year-old son had to live with his wife's parents during the week. They had been trying to move for two years. He took out a cigarette and leaned against the railing, looking down the street at the boy fishing.

     Further along the quay two figures were approaching. He watched as they wandered slowly towards him. They looked to be in their early thirties and were obviously tourists, Americans he would guess. The woman had shoulder-length reddish hair and pale freckled skin. She was slim and athletic looking. Her partner was tall and flabby, his stomach protruding from under his T-shirt. He wore knee-length shorts, sunglasses and his long hair was tied in a pony tail. They came slowly along the dusty street of warehouses. Tourists were not uncommon in the city but they usually kept to the old port with its rococo churches and stately customs house, or took the organized cruises along the reef. It was rare to see them in this district and Manuel assumed they were lost.

<  2  >
     â€˜Look at the poor thing,' said the woman, stopping beside the fish, which lay where the boy had kicked it, probably now gasping its last breaths. She spoke with a lazy, nasal drawl. The boy had not turned around but he had noticed their presence. He stared fixedly across the glittering surface of the water towards the lines of washing in the narrow streets on the opposite bank, waiting for them to go.

     â€˜It ought to be thrown back,' the woman was saying. ‘Do you think he wants it?' She turned to her companion who shrugged. He looked nervous.

     â€˜I don't like the look of this neighborhood,' he said. ‘I think we should get back.' But the woman wasn't going to let it pass. She stood there looking from the fish to the boy and back again.

     â€˜You could try asking him,' the man said. The woman stepped around the fish and approached the boy, who was still looking out across the river. The child's body tensed as the woman came up to him.

     â€˜Do you know that fish is dying?' Manuel heard her ask. The boy looked up at her blankly and then shook his head. ‘Dy-ing,' she repeated, drawing out each syllable, but the boy remained dumb, uncomprehending. He fidgeted awkwardly with his feet.

     â€˜I don't think he understands,' said the woman to her partner. The man shrugged as if to say ‘I told you we shouldn't get involved'. She looked around for assistance and noticed Manuel watching her. She stared at him for a moment, taking in the cream-coloured linen suit, the shoes. She was obviously unsure what to make of him.

     â€˜Do you speak English?' she asked, this time with a more respectful tone than she had used with the boy. Manuel said that he did but in a voice which gave her no reason to expect his help. She held his gaze for a few moments.

     â€˜Can you ask this boy what he means to do with the fish? It seems so cruel, it ought to be thrown back.' He looked across at the boy and then at the woman. He wondered if he should tell her about the kind of life this boy led, about the squalid shacks down by the beach from where he had probably come that morning, about the parents struggling to make ends meet. Two days earlier he had read in the local paper about a fishing community a few miles up the coast which was being evicted to make way for a new hotel. The boy was watching them anxiously.

<  3  >
     â€˜Esta senhora quer saber o que voce vai fazer com o peixe,' he said to the boy. He treated the boy gently, with consideration. The boy wiped a dirty hand across one eye and looked at Manuel.

     â€˜E para vender,' he responded.

     â€˜He intends to sell it,' he told the woman. He tried to make his answer sound final, as though that was the end of the matter. The woman hesitated, perhaps uncertain how to interpret the lack of encouragement in his voice. Manuel observed her confusion. Her eyes searched his face as though looking for some clue. Her companion shifted nervously behind her.

     â€˜Honey, I think we should go,' he said. But the woman ignored him. He shuffled uncomfortably. ‘You know I really don't think you should interfere.'

     â€˜How much does the boy want for the fish?' the woman asked. Manuel glanced at her companion with his stooped shoulders and useless bulk. The woman's determination amused him but he did not smile.

     â€˜A senhora quer comprar o peixe. Quanto e?' The boy named a price which was five times what he would have got for it locally. His expression was deadpan. Only a slight clenching of his right hand betrayed the tension he was probably feeling. Manuel told her the price, adopting the same tone of voice with which he had addressed her previously, but this time he could not help smiling. She seemed to interpret this as friendliness. She opened her purse and took out some money, peeling off a note of twice the value the boy had asked.

     â€˜Does he have any change?' she asked.

     Manuel translated. Again the boy's right hand twitched slightly but otherwise his face wore the same expression of innocence it had before. He shook his head. The woman hesitated for a moment and looked across at the fish. Then she held out the note to the boy who took it. She stooped down, picked the fish up carefully between forefinger and thumb and threw it into the river. Without looking at either Manuel or the boy she turned to her companion and they went on up the road together. The man produced a handkerchief and offered it to the woman to wipe her fingers but she refused it. They appeared to be arguing. The boy stood holding the note. His expression had hardly changed. Manuel watched the couple until they disappeared out of sight. They did not once look back. He lit another cigarette and returned to his former position against the railings.

<  4  >
     The fish had not survived its lengthy time out of the water and was now floating amidst the debris a few feet out from the bank, washed in against the shore by the backward eddy of the current. The boy climbed over the railings and down onto a ledge just above the water line. He began dragging the dead fish towards him with a stick. When it was finally within reach he caught hold of it and tossed it up onto the road. As he clambered over the railings he grinned at Manuel. The boy gathered up his rod and the fish and set off up the street. Manuel watched him while he finished his cigarette. Then he threw the butt down into the dirty water and made his way back the way he had come.

 
 

[nusrat-diu]

 
 

 Simon Collings
Snow
1

Vanessa and Robert are on holiday. It is New Year's Eve and Vanessa is driving over the fell road. Robert is explaining to her what will happen in the event of a major radiation leak at the nearby power station. Vanessa doesn't want to think about accidents or the threat of terrorist attacks. She prefers to imagine instead the glacial ice-sheets which covered these mountains for millions of years. She thinks of the slow-moving ice carving down through the valleys. She imagines clear skies and a world covered with virgin snow, a pristine version of the landscape through which they are driving.

     â€˜It's still there,' announces Robert, who has been looking back at the power station through the rear window of the car. ‘Yes,' says Vanessa. She is trying to make her voice sound conversational but it sounds accusing. She forces herself to smile so that he will give her the benefit of the doubt. On another occasion she might not have bothered and he would have sulked, forcing her to ask what the matter was. She would resist, knowing full well what she was doing, wanting him to fight her, though she knows he won't. But this is neither the time nor the place and she lets it drop. She repeats to herself the names of rocks: calcareous, gneiss, feldspar. The words sound hard, unyielding, comforting.

     A few scarlet-marked sheep scatter from the road onto the gorse-covered bank. There are yellow flowers on the gorse which she knows blooms every day of the year; ‘Like hope' her mother used to say. Vanessa has been living with Robert for six years. She is 29. Recently she has taken to thinking a lot about herself. What once seemed distant concerns have taken on a real urgency. She cannot see herself with Robert for the rest of her life. She wants to break out but she doesn't yet know where to. In the earlier days of living together they laughed over friends and relatives getting married. They congratulated themselves on their freedom. Each of them had a career. How was it possible to make a commitment so young? After a time they ceased to talk about it. Now the fact they have not married seems to demand correction.

<  2  >
     'How long before we get to the car park?' Vanessa asks. Robert says it's not too far. Around the next bend they see the sign and Vanessa pulls off the road and stops with the nose of the car pointing towards mountains. There is a lake behind them, a long curve of metallic blue. The power station has passed from sight.

     She had felt the wind buffeting the car while she was driving but the violence of it almost knocks her over as she gets out to put on her walking boots. She turns round to see Robert chasing his hat down the road. He play-acts for her benefit and she laughs. Robert looks pleased as he comes back up the road towards her, his hat now firmly secured on his head.

     From the car park they cross a narrow brook and take the path up the valley in front of them. Robert has traced out a route along the dotted footpaths marked on the Ordnance Survey map. His square back and shoulders move ahead. Vanessa's boots squelch in the half-frozen mud. They climb in silence, following the trail along the side of the lower hillslope. There are footprints in the mud but once the car park has passed from view she cannot see any other forms of human life, only the white, drifted snow. Across the valley Vanessa occasionally mistakes a rock for a human figure. She thinks how difficult it would be to find someone if they were lost up here. She is glad she is wearing her bright yellow waterproof. Robert has on only an old, brown flying jacket. From the air he would be indistinguishable from the boulders littering the hillside, she thinks.

     She picks her way unsteadily over the wet ground, trying to follow Robert in the placing of a foot here or there. Several times they have to stop while Robert finds a way through a particularly boggy section of the path. Vanessa watches him. When they first knew each other he used to go climbing. But friends moved away and he got out of the habit. Now he rarely even goes out.

<  3  >
     Vanessa wonders if she was ever really in love with Robert. She has certainly felt affection for him, and still does. She doesn't want to hurt him. She thinks it was a desire for security rather than love that provided the motivation for their living together. It was a way of escaping from being by herself.

     At the top of the ridge they pause to catch their breath and Robert divides out some chocolate he has brought with him. Beneath them the full extent of the lake is visible in the slanting rays of the sun. Vanessa remembers reading about a woman's body being found in the lake. It had been lashed to a concrete fence post. The woman had been murdered by her husband at their home in the midlands. He had loaded the body into the boot of the family car and driven to visit their son at a private school in Devon, where he had checked into a hotel for the night. But instead of sleeping he had driven up here, dumped the body and then driven south again to arrive in time for breakfast at the hotel. The surprising part of the story was that after the police found the body three other murderers confessed.

     â€˜What are you thinking about?' Robert asks.

     â€˜I was wondering what drives a man to murder his wife,' Vanessa says.

     â€˜Why don't they just walk out on them?'

     â€˜I don't know,' Robert says. ‘Is it always husbands murdering wives?'

     â€˜Not always,' says Vanessa. ‘But isn't it usually?'

     â€˜I suppose you're right,' Robert says.

     â€˜There was a body found in this lake a few years back. Three men confessed to the murder before the actual murderer was identified.'

     â€˜You mean three hoaxes?'

     â€˜No three murderers confessed, but this wasn't their victim. I guess the pressure of maintaining their secrets finally got to be too much.'

<  4  >
     â€˜Well I promise not to murder you,' says Robert, grinning. Vanessa doesn't respond. He has started fidgeting, a sign that he wants to go on. They continue climbing in silence, Robert in front, Vanessa behind. Craggy peaks tower above them. The higher they climb the bigger the mountains appear to become. It seems to Vanessa that they have come almost no distance at all even though it is nearly an hour since they left the car. Twenty yards ahead of her Robert stops to consult the map.

     â€˜This is the wrong path,' he announces as Vanessa comes up towards him. ‘It gets more and more like a river the higher up we go.'

     â€˜Where is the real path?' Vanessa asks.

     â€˜Up there,' Robert replies pointing up the slope. ‘Fancy a climb?'

     Vanessa perches on top of a clump of snow-covered grass. The sock inside her left boot is wet. Robert is starting to climb. He is obviously excited. This is his idea of a good walk. He never really feels he's been out unless he's spent hours scrambling over loose screes and fording rivers.

     â€˜Robert, this is crazy!' Vanessa shouts. What if he falls, she is thinking. What if I fall? She feels annoyed that they have come the wrong way, but not particularly with Robert. How have they managed to lose their way? She feels as though her dignity has been undermined, as though she has been humiliated. But she knows this is something that only concerns herself.

     â€˜I suppose you're right.' Robert sounds disappointed as he sits on his hands and toboggans down the slope towards her. ‘It's getting late. We ought to head back anyway.'

     Descending the slope again Robert hands her another piece of chocolate. Vanessa is still wondering how they missed the path. The track they are walking along seems unfamiliar, but perhaps that is just the effect of going the other way. The last of the sunlight fills the valley below. In less than an hour it will begin to get dark. In the entire landscape there is no sign of human habitation and nothing moves.

<  5  >
     â€˜Well that's the last of the chocolate,' Robert says screwing up the foil wrapper in his hand.

 

II

The cottage they are staying in belongs to a friend of Robert's. In the visitors' book there are entries back to 1996. Many of them are disconcertingly personal, especially the religious ones. They talk of private grief and individual heartache, of the healing power of beauty and quietness. Vanessa is surprised by these entries. Lawrence, who owns the place, has never shown the slightest inclination towards spirituality in the time she has known him. She guesses these must be entries by acquaintances of Lawrence's father, a retired clergyman who lives at the other end of the village. They have yet to meet him but know they probably will. Lawrence's father visits everyone who stays in the cottage.

     Best of all in the visitors' book Vanessa likes the entries of the children, Lawrence's children growing up through the summer and winter holidays spent here. There are Sarah's first tentative entries, and Neil's coloured doodles. Someone has written beside them in blue ink: ‘Neil's signature aged 2 ½ years.' There is other evidence of the children in the cottage too: a wicker basket of rocks and sea shells and the pale skeletons of sea urchins. There are dried conkers on the mantelpiece and children's storybooks on the shelf among the walking guides, detective books and recipe books.

     Children are one of the reasons Vanessa knows she has to leave Robert. Earlier in life she had thought that she would never want children. The commitment of so much time had seemed to her unthinkable. Now she finds herself increasingly imagining the presence of children. She has left it late already. She does not want to leave it for much longer. Yet she cannot see Robert as the father of her children. She has tried to picture it to herself but she cannot reconcile herself to such a vision. They would go on then for years. The thought makes her feel as though she were suffocating.

     The sound of someone knocking at the front door interrupts the flow of Vanessa's thoughts and she sits up in the bath in which she has been soaking. She can hear Robert talking to someone in the front room and wonders if she should get out. The bath is warm and comfortable however and she decides to wait. It is a man's voice she can hear but she can't quite make out what is being said. Vanessa hopes the visitor won't think her anti-social as she slides back down into the soft, soapy water.

<  6  >
     The bathroom is damp and black mould is growing on the walls in places. She has the wall heater on and a fan heater, the lead running in under the door from the kitchen. She soaps her body slowly. Recently she read an article in a magazine which claimed that personal smells were a major reason for marriages breaking up. It said that Americans used so much deodorant that it wasn't until they were married that they discovered how each other smelled and often that spelled disaster. She hasn't yet made up her mind whether she thinks there's any truth in this. She hears the front door closing, then Robert coming through into the kitchen.

     â€˜That was Lawrence's father,' he calls through the bathroom door. ‘He's invited us round after dinner this evening.'

     â€˜What's he like?' Vanessa asks. Robert pushes open the bathroom door as though taking her question for an invitation.

     â€˜Nice,' he says. He stands in the door way gazing at her through the steam. Vanessa hopes he isn't going to touch her.

     â€˜Do you want me to start making dinner or are you going to be some time?' he asks. This is his way of saying that he is hungry. So that's what he's concerned about, she thinks.

     â€˜OK, I'll get out in a minute,' she says. Robert smiles at her then goes out, closing the door. Vanessa rinses the soap from her arms and legs and stands up, reaching for a damp towel hanging behind the door. She rubs the towel over her flat stomach and wonders what it would be like to feel it swelling. She isn't attracted to the facts of pregnancy, only the idea of motherhood. She doesn't like being ill and being pregnant she thinks would be a bit like being sick for nine months. She hopes that having a child will make her feel that she has done something with her life. In the kitchen she can hear Robert shifting pans around. Vanessa finishes towelling her body and steps out onto the bath mat. Then she dries her feet. She feels clean now, like herself, uncontaminated.

<  7  >
III

While Robert is cooking dinner Vanessa studies the map, tracing the route they followed that afternoon. She is trying to work out where they went wrong, but after a while she gives up the attempt. Instead she looks at other places they have visited. She sits in front of the open fire in a big armchair, feet curled under her. She has always loved maps. There is something reassuring about knowing where you are and where you have been. She uses the map to build up a mental picture of the area, connecting one day's memories with another.

     Neither Robert nor Vanessa have been to this part of the country before. Vanessa remembers travelling past on the motorway going north as a child but neither of them count that. Two years ago they went to the Yorkshire Dales and Vanessa was surprised to discover how much history there was in the area. Though a southerner, she had always thought herself immune from southern prejudice. She had expected bleak moorland, not fertile valleys and ruined abbeys. She was reminded of a map of the British Isles a friend's child had drawn at school. The capital occupied a third of the map with the north tapering away to a tiny, almost non-existent Scotland. Now she is wiser. Still she draws a blank on the history of this part of the country.

     â€˜What happened here before Gray and Wordsworth put it on the map?' she calls out to Robert.

     â€˜Nothing much,' he calls back above the sound of the fan heater. ‘Sheep, lots of sheep. It was too inaccessible for anything else.'

     In the bottom corner of the map is the power station. It looks just like a village except that it has no name, only the word ‘works' to indicate what it is. The site blends innocuously into its surroundings. There are no ‘danger' signs, no skull and crossbones, no radiation symbol. It is unobtrusive, not as it appears in real life, and yet Vanessa feels there is a sort of truth in its being so unremarkable. The map keeps faith with the way local people have accepted the power station into their lives, the way tissue grows around a foreign body, enfolding it.

<  8  >
     That morning they had been into the tiny seaside town to the south of the power station to buy coal. They had to stop at a garage to ask for directions to the local coal merchant, which turned out to be an ordinary-looking, semi-detached house in a side road. Robert rang the bell. An elderly woman opened the door to him and together they disappeared around the back of the house. A few minutes later Robert reappeared struggling with two bags of coal and Vanessa got out to open the boot. The old woman followed Robert down the path.

     â€˜Yes it's very pretty, so long as it stays up on the hills,' she was saying.

     â€˜Snow,' said Robert by way of explanation.

     Vanessa folds the map and puts it on the table. In the kitchen Robert swears loudly.

     â€˜Everything OK?' she calls.

     â€˜The soup just boiled over.'

     â€˜I'll open the wine,' she says. The smell of the cooking is making her hungry. She takes the corkscrew from a drawer in the sideboard and uncorks the bottle which has been standing on the table. Robert believes in eating and drinking well, especially on holiday. So does Vanessa, but she finds the time spent hunting for ingredients tiresome. Robert always seems to forget that few places offer the variety of shops they have in London. He seems surprised when ingredients he regards as perfectly ordinary aren't available. That morning they had been to four different shops in two towns before they found the sour cream which Robert insisted was an essential accompaniment to the soup he is cooking. He also forgets that few holiday cottages are equipped with the range of utensils he has assembled at home. She wishes she didn't begrudge him the pleasures of preparing these meals.

     â€˜OK we're ready,' says Robert appearing at the kitchen door. ‘I'm going to dish up the first course.' The soup they are having tonight is a traditional recipe using dried peas and bacon. During the time she has known him Robert's cooking has gone through a number of phases, all of them associated with places he has visited on holiday. For a while it was Portugal, then France. Currently he is infatuated with traditional English cookery. While Robert places the two bowls of soup on the table Vanessa pours the wine. She takes a mouthful, hoping the alcohol will help her relax. She feels anxious though she can't say exactly why. The soup seems none the worse for having boiled over and she compliments Robert on its delicate flavour. He looks pleased.

<  9  >
     â€˜I thought you were annoyed with me,' he says.

     â€˜Why?'

     â€˜Oh I don't know, you haven't said much since we got back from the walk.'

     â€˜Sorry,' Vanessa says. ‘I'm just in a quiet sort of mood.'

     â€˜What are you thinking about?'

     â€˜Nothing really,' she says, wondering if she should tell him about the way the power station appears on the map. But she decides not to. He will only start talking about the issues again. ‘I'll try to cheer up.'

     The soup is followed by roast pheasant. Robert serves it in the kitchen.

     â€˜Good job we brought that sharp knife,' he says. ‘The ones here are as blunt as…whatever things get as blunt as.' The knife had been Vanessa's idea. She knew from experience that they wouldn't find one here with any sort of edge to it. Robert never believes her when she says they need to pack these sorts of implements, he always thinks she's making a fuss. Not that he'd worry if they found they were without something. He'd just go and buy it. The corkscrew was her idea too. While they are eating Vanessa asks about Lawrence's father.

     â€˜Nothing much to tell,' says Robert, his mouth half full of food. He swallows, then picks up his glass and gulps down a mouthful of wine before continuing. ‘He was only here a couple of minutes. You wouldn't have guessed he was a vicar, his voice sounded quite normal.'

     Vanessa is curious to meet Lawrence's father but at the same time she's worried that they won't find anything to talk about. She hates the empty platitudes which people exchange when they have nothing to say. She particularly hates it in herself because she knows she can do better.

     â€˜What will we talk about?' she asks, thinking aloud.

     â€˜Oh I don't know, lots of things.' Robert takes another mouthful of wine. Vanessa worries that Lawrence's father may want to talk about religion. She has never been religious. The universe is too vast, she thinks, for it to have a creator capable of taking a personal interest in individual people's lives. She believes this brief life is all she can expect and she has to make the most of it. Robert's thoughts are obviously running along similar lines though he has a different perspective.

<  10  >
     â€˜You can understand how, in a place like this, people might believe in God,' he says. ‘These peaks and the stillness of the lakes make the idea of a creator almost plausible. It has a kind of human scale.' Vanessa says nothing. She finds nothing benign in this landscape the way Robert does. She thinks of it as neutral, indifferent to her small existence. ‘I suppose that's what Wordsworth is all about,' he continues.

     â€˜I think I'm more in sympathy with Coleridge,' Vanessa replies. ‘He couldn't take all this beauty. It reminded him too much of the passing of time.' She had intended to say ‘reminded him of death' but she thought this would sound too morbid.

     â€˜I suppose it depends on temperament,' Robert says, determined not to be deflated. Robert is the type who would find these mountains ‘healing'. He's a romantic, she thinks. Vanessa cannot feel that way. She wants change in her life, not reconciliation.

 

IV

Lawrence's father is shorter than she had expected. He looks well for his age, the result, she supposes, of having led an active life. He is dressed casually in a thick brown sweater, grey woollen trousers and red carpet slippers. He arranges chairs for them and throws some more wood on the fire.

     â€˜There, make yourselves comfortable while I take your coats,' he says. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece strikes eight. Vanessa takes off her waterproof and scarf. The room is small, the front door blocked up and the only light is from the fire and from a desk lamp by the window. She checks her appearance in the mirror which hangs above the fireplace, an old octagonal glass without a frame. Her hair is a little untidy from the walk and she straightens it.

     â€˜I'm afraid I don't have much in the house to eat.' Lawrence's father says, placing a tin of biscuits on the table with some knives and plates and a jar of rum butter. ‘Do you like rum butter?' Vanessa tells him she loves it and he hands her a plate. ‘I have a friend who brings me a jar every Christmas,' he says.

<  11  >
     From the kitchen the boiling kettle emits a loud whistle and he goes to make the tea. Vanessa inspects the room. There is a large bookcase in one corner full of theology books and poetry. On the desk there is a book lying open next to a sheet of paper with a few lines written on it in black ink. Before she has time to read them, Lawrence's father returns. Robert is already placing a thickly buttered biscuit in his mouth.

     â€˜So what have you been up to since you arrived?' he asks setting the teapot on its brass stand by the fire.

     â€˜Walking mostly,' Robert says, and he runs through the names of the various places they have visited. Vanessa doesn't say much. She lets Robert talk for both of them. He ends by telling about the walk that afternoon, including how they lost their way. Robert treats this as a joke.

     â€˜It's easily done in the snow,' says the old man. But Vanessa suspects he is simply being polite. If one belonged here one would not make these kind of mistakes, she thinks. Lawrence's father suggests other places they might visit. Robert explains that they only have one more day of holiday left.

     â€˜We'll have to save them for next time,' he says. Vanessa feels gloomy at the thought of returning home. She is afraid that the routines will take hold again and that she will let life drift on. Though she feels she cannot stay with Robert, she cannot imagine the end either. Practical difficulties occupy her thoughts, like where she will live and how they will divide up the possessions they have accumulated together. She knows there is no way to manage a separation cleanly. It is this which she dreads most of all.

     â€˜Lawrence said you grew up here,' Robert is saying. The old man confirms this. Vanessa hadn't known.

     â€˜And have you lived here all your life?' she asks.

     â€˜Mostly,' he says. ‘I had a couple of brief spells away.' Vanessa feels envious of his rootedness. There is nowhere she thinks of as home. Her parents moved twice when she was a child and the secret places of her infancy have long since disappeared under tarmac and concrete.

<  12  >
     â€˜Don't you worry about living so close to the power station?' Robert asks.

     â€˜I'm concerned about it. But at my age there's not much point worrying about dying.' He smiles.

     â€˜What do people round here think about the idea of living on top of a nuclear dump? Robert asks.

     â€˜Well you have to remember that most of them depend on it for their livelihoods. This area was devastated during the thirties you know. Some people here still remember that.'

     â€˜Aren't people worried?'

     â€˜Yes, many don't like it. But the authorities don't tell you much about what's going on and it's difficult to get to the bottom of many of the stories you hear. The media like to play things up. For the most part people have found a way to accommodate its existence.' Vanessa thinks about the old lady at the coal merchant's.

     â€˜People believe what they want to believe I suppose,' Vanessa says.

     â€˜That doesn't mean there isn't a right and a wrong,' Robert interjects.

     â€˜No, that's right,' Lawrence's father says, ‘though the issues are complex.' Vanessa feels chastened, though she hadn't meant to sound so dismissive. Truth is not the issue, she thinks. Lawrence's father, more than anyone, should understand this. People need to be able to imagine a future. They have to believe they will survive.

     â€˜What would Wordsworth have made of it all?' she asks to change the subject.

     â€˜Oh, he'd have hated it,' the old man says.

     â€˜Really?' says Vanessa, uncertain if this is the answer she had expected or not.

     â€˜Oh yes, he didn't like technological change. He was opposed to the railway coming here for instance. He even wrote a sonnet about it. "Is there no nook of English ground secure from rash assault," or something like that. It's not a very good sonnet I might add.' He pours more tea and offers them more biscuits.

<  13  >
     â€˜Would he ever have come near this village?' Robert asks.

     â€˜Right along this road,' Lawrence's father replies. ‘He had a friend at Whitehaven. He and Coleridge used to walk over from Grasmere and would have come right past here. When I was younger I used to do that walk myself. But I couldn't do it now.'

     Vanessa thinks that the excursions she and Robert have been making hardly merit the name ‘walks' compared to the feats of distance Lawrence's father is talking about. She feels they ought to be doing more. One day they won't be able to. She wonders what it must be like to be at the end of one's life looking back. She wants to have a full life so that when she is old she will be able at least to say I did this and this and this, tangible achievements. She supposes that such memories are some kind of consolation.

     â€˜I did think of moving away at one time,' Lawrence's father continues. ‘That was a few years ago, after my wife died. But I'm too used to it here now.'

     â€˜Were you married long?' Vanessa asks.

     â€˜Forty-two years,' the old man says with a smile. ‘I thought she would outlive me.'

     â€˜That's a long time,' says Robert, echoing Vanessa's own thought. It is the time she has been with Robert seven times over. She looks up to find Lawrence's father watching her and for a moment she has the uncanny feeling that he has read her mind. But she tells herself she is being silly. All the same she suddenly feels disturbed. She feels as though she ought to say something but she takes up her cup and saucer instead. She wonders if the old man has noticed her confusion. If he has he shows no sign of it.

     â€˜I'll put the kettle on again,' he says.

 

V

Robert sits at the table playing the guitar, fingering his way hesitantly through a piece in a book of guitar studies. On the table is a pile of books he brought with him. There are volumes of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, De Quincey's Recollections of the Lake Poets, a book about Morecambe Bay. Vanessa leans forward in her chair and stirs the embers in the grate. The fire has burned right down and it is getting cold in the room. It is nearly midnight however, so she doesn't put any more coal on the fire. Instead she gets up and puts on the electric fan heater. Robert puts down his guitar.

<  14  >
     â€˜Fancy another drink?' he says. Vanessa accepts though she is already feeling drowsy. She knows she could have gone to bed, it wouldn't have mattered to Robert, but somehow she feels it is important that she stays up to see the New Year in.

     Robert fills two glasses with whiskey and hands one to her. She returns to her chair and picks up the book on geological history she is reading, opening it at the bookmark. Then she decides she is too distracted to read and closes it again.

     â€˜This bit always makes me feel a little panicky,' Robert says. ‘The final minutes of the year ticking away. It's unnerving.'

     â€˜You're supposed to think about friends,' Vanessa says.

     â€˜I know,' he says, drinking the whiskey back and taking the bottle to pour himself another. ‘All the same it feels eerie somehow.'

     â€˜Tell me what you've been reading about,' Vanessa says. Robert fits the cork back in the bottle carefully before replying.

     â€˜I've been reading about what an unpleasant human being Wordsworth was. That's De Quincey's view anyway. De Quincey really got to dislike Wordsworth.'

     â€˜I thought he worshipped him,' says Vanessa. Robert explains that that was earlier in his life, before he'd even met Wordsworth. Wordsworth had shown a lot of ingratitude towards De Quincey later on and De Quincey resented it.

     â€˜He was really bitter about it,' Robert says.

     â€˜Maybe it was because Wordsworth had changed,' Vanessa volunteers.

     â€˜Maybe,' Robert answers. He seems not to want to discuss it further. ‘What about you?' he asks after a pause.

     â€˜I've been reading about the ice ages,' Vanessa says. ‘It's strange, this afternoon I was thinking of all that earth history somehow being static; millions of years of ice when nothing happened, everything frozen and unmoving. But if you think of that time all speeded up, everything was moving around all over the place. The Sahara was once at the South Pole.'

<  15  >
     â€˜If you'd been there though everything would have seemed pretty static,' Robert says. ‘It depends on your point of view.' Vanessa looks at him, wondering if she has explained herself properly. She feels slightly foolish that she could have become so excited about the idea of the continents flowing over the earth, ice advancing and retreating. All of these things are familiar to Robert.

     The alarm on Robert's phone goes off. ‘Midnight,' he announces. ‘The New Year has arrived. He gets up from his chair, draws back the curtain over the door and lifts the latch. Outside the night is clear. No more snow has fallen. The path is still marked by the trail of footprints they made earlier. Across the road the fields lie silent under their white covering and further along the next cottage is dark. Maybe everyone is out, Vanessa thinks. In the distance fireworks light up the sky but the sound is far away. Robert starts trying to guess the outline of constellations.

     â€˜There, isn't that Orion?' he says. Vanessa doesn't know. ‘There's something over there too,' Roberts says. ‘But I can't remember what it's called.'

     Vanessa stands in the doorway watching Robert who is pointing up into the night sky. Then she looks down at her small footprints in the soft, powdery snow. So this is it then,' she thinks, ‘this is the future.'

[nusrat-diu]

 
 


Alison L. Randall
End of the Line

When Frank and I stepped through the post office doors, there was a crowd gathered, gawking at the new fixture on the wall like a chorus of wide-mouthed frogs. I had to get closer, and that was where being a girl that's scrawnier than a wire fence came in handy. Fortunately, Frank, my twin of eleven years, was just the same.

     "Come on." I said, grabbing his hand, and we slid through the cracks between people until we spilled out in front.

     Finally I got a good look. It was fixed to the plaster next to the postmaster's window, the place of honor usually reserved for the Wanted posters. Beady-eyed Zedekiah Smith, the bank robber, still hung there, but even he had been pushed aside for something more important.

     A telephone. The first one in town.

     "How's it work?" Noah Crawford called out. Noah's the best fix-it man around, and I could tell he was itching to get his fingers on those shiny knobs.

     "Don't rightly know," answered the postmaster, and he tugged at his goatee as if it might tell him. "I do know the sound of your voice moves along wires strung on poles. It's sort of like the telegraph, only you hear words instead of dots and dashes."

     "Ah," the crowd murmured, and I felt my own mouth move along.

     I gazed at that gleaming wood box and something happened inside me. Something — I can only guess — that might be like falling in love. The thought of talking into that box — of making my voice sail through wires in the sky — it took over my brain. I couldn't get it out.

     "Frank," I whispered to my twin. "I have to use that telephone."

     Five minutes later, Frank towed me up Main Street, toward home. "Liza — " he began, but I cut him off. We two thought so much alike, I had Frank's questions answered before he even asked.

<  2  >
     "You're right," I said. "It costs five cents and I don't have it. But look." I pulled him over to the window of Poulson's Variety Store. "You see those?"

     I pointed to a handful of shimmery rocks spread on black velvet. Some were a shiny gray shot through with gold streaks, others yellow as cheese curds. And one, clear and jagged, sat like an icicle, leftover from wintertime.

     Frank's eyebrows screwed up and I could tell he wasn't following.

     "If I found one of those, I bet they'd pay me for it." I explained.

     With a shake of his head, Frank hooked two thumbs under his suspenders. "But Liza — "

     I held up a hand — he couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. "I've got that figured, too. I'll bet we could find some at North Creek — in the mine."

     Frank shrugged, pretending not to care, but I knew better. He wanted to explore that old mine, same as me. Besides, Frank knew he had no choice. Twins stick together, especially scrawny ones, 'cause it takes two of us to make one of most people.

     We spent half the morning on the dusty road to North Creek. Ma packed a lunch but said she couldn't understand walking all that way for rocks. She thought we were off to search the dry creek bed, and I didn't correct her.

     I felt a bit guilty about fooling my ma, but whenever a pang hit, I conjured up the vision of my voice dancing along wires in the sky. It looked a lot like me, my voice did, only wearing a pink tutu and carrying a frilly umbrella.

     We reached the old mine around noon. The hole in the sage-covered hill had been shored up by timbers. They were weathered and splintery, and looked like a picture frame around nothing.

<  3  >
     I stepped inside, my arms turning to goose bumps from the chill. The air smelled of mildew and rotted beams, but also of horse sweat and wood smoke. Strange. That mine had sat empty for years.

     Once my eyes got used to the dim, I gazed around, hoping to see shimmery rocks littering the floor, but dust was all I saw. Frank walked past me to where the walls narrowed, then disappeared around the curve. I followed fast.

     I'd come up right behind Frank when, ting, his boot connected with metal. He stooped, grabbed, and when he stood, his palm held more than we'd hoped.

     A gold coin. Frank's eyes nearly popped.

     "Where did that come from?" I whispered and reached out a finger to touch.

     Just then, voices sounded in the next cavern over: "Zed, hold it higher." Two men stepped through a gap in the far wall.

     They weren't miners. I could tell that from one glance. They were dressed for riding, with leather chaps and spurs. One held saddlebags over a shoulder and had a mustache that hung past his jaw. The other wore a battered hat, his face hid in its shadow. When he raised his lantern, the light shone full on those beady eyes.

     It was Zedekiah Smith, the bank robber.

     I plastered myself to the wall, hoping to disappear into shadow. Frank hunched over, hiding his head in his sleeves. But for once, we weren't scrawny enough.

     "Hey!" The mustached man pointed, then dropped his saddlebags and ran for us.

     I tried to run, too, but met up with Frank's backside. The next thing I knew, Frank and I were on the ground, being hauled to our feet by a sharp-nailed hand.

     "Lookee here, Zed," our captor cried, "a couple of spies."

<  4  >
     "No," I said, brushing myself off. "We're not spies. We were looking for rocks to sell. There's a new telephone in town, and I just wanted to — Ow!"

     The mustache man yanked my hair. "Does she always talk this much?" he asked Frank. Frank — the traitor — nodded.

     "Looking for rocks, eh?" Mustache Man pried open Frank's fingers. The gold coin glowed warm in the lantern light. "Lookee here, Zed. Musta fallen out."

     Zedekiah Smith strode over and picked the coin out of Frank's palm. "You don't want that, boy. That's dirty money."

     "You made it that way," I told him. "You stole it."

     Zedekiah Smith narrowed his eyes, turning them even beadier. "Caleb's right. You do talk a lot."

     Five minutes later, Frank and I were back to back on the ground.

     "That's what you get," Caleb said, as he tied our hands behind us. "Shouldn't go poking your noses in bad places."

     "It wouldn't be bad without you," I said, and Frank twitched.

     "Sure it would," Caleb said. "Old mine's a dangerous place. You could've got caught in a cave-in, or bit by rattlers. Lucky you got us instead. He, he!" He tightened his knots then stood straight. "Someone will find you in a day or so. We'll be long gone by then. Right Zed?"

     "That's right." Zedekiah Smith stood back, watching Caleb do the dirty work, his eyes shaded again.

     "Just let us go," I begged. "We won't tell."

     "Ha!" Caleb shouldered the saddlebags. "I'd like to see you keep your mouth still."

     Zedekiah Smith took up the lantern and without looking back they passed through the opening in the rock wall. I listened until the jingle of their spurs faded.

<  5  >
     We were alone in dark so thick it stopped up my nose. Caleb was right. This was a bad place. I wouldn't last a day. And worse, when Ma found my lifeless body, she'd know I was a liar.

     I was about to sink into despair, but Frank distracted me with more twitching.

     "There," he said. "I'm free."

     I couldn't believe it when the ropes went slack. Jumping to my feet, I rubbed my wrists, trying to figure how Frank had managed to surprise me so. It wasn't that he'd worked his bony wrists out of Caleb's knots. That was plain Frank. The real surprise was that he'd come up with the idea without my help.

     "Phew," I said, relief washing over me at my second chance at life. Ma wouldn't have to find my lifeless body after all. And as for the liar part, well, I'd work on that.

     But first, I had another good deed in mind, the best way to begin my new life. I was about to turn in that outlaw.

     I grabbed Frank's arm and towed him toward the exit. "We need to get to town and report Zedekiah Smith." Then something else occurred to me. "Think of the telephone calls I could make with that reward money."

     'Liza — " Frank started up, but I knew where he was heading.

     "Of course we'll split it."

     We rounded the wall and ran smack into another, one with chaps and a hat. Zedekiah Smith was back. Before we could move, he had us trussed in his arms like two pigs for slaughter.

     "Let go!" I cried, pounding his chest.

     "Shh," he whispered. "Caleb thinks I forgot something."

     I froze. "But . . . "

<  6  >
     "I came back to cut you loose."

     For once, I had a hard time filling my mouth with words.

     "Now, you stay hidden until I get Caleb away," he whispered. "It won't do to have him telling people about my weak stomach."

     "Are you feeling poorly?" Frank asked and Zedekiah Smith laughed.

     "No, but I've got no stomach for hurting people." His arms went limp, releasing us, and he took a step back. "You'd better do your duty and report me. But take this in case that reward money's long in coming." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pale yellow rock studded with honey-colored crystals. "I saw it out in the dry creek bed. Might be worth a telephone call."

     He dropped it into my hand and gave a wink. Then he turned and walked out into the sunlight. Frank and I gawked, like a duet of wide-mouthed frogs.

     We didn't make it to the Sheriff's office until the next morning. I reported Zedekiah Smith, just like I should, but for some reason, it didn't feel like a good deed anymore.

     Our next stop was the Variety Store. Old Mr. Poulson's eyes kindled when he saw the crystal rock. Twenty-five cents went to Frank, who wasted it on candy. I saved mine for something monumental.

     The post office wasn't crowded anymore. Still, there were a few lookers as I walked to the counter and laid down my nickel.

     "I'd like to make a telephone call," I announced.

     "How about that," the postmaster said, stroking his goatee. "You'll be the first. Who would you like to call?"

     "Who?" I echoed. And just like that, my vision dissolved. Pink tutu and frilly umbrella, both drifted off like a dandelion in the wind. My voice couldn't dance along wires — it had no place to go. Nobody I knew had a telephone.

<  7  >
     I turned to Frank and found him grinning.

     "You saw it all along," I accused.

     He shrugged. "I tried to tell you."

     "You did?" I thought back to the day before and realized that maybe he had. I'd been too busy using my own mouth to notice.

     After taking one last, loving look at the telephone, I turned away from the counter. Maybe candy would be a good use for that nickel after all.

     "Frank," I said, pondering those thoughts he kept having without me, "next time you have something to say, speak up. I'll try hard to listen."

     The poster of Zedekiah Smith seemed to nod at me as we passed.


 

[nusrat-diu]

    Fernando Sorrentino
A Question of Age
Translation by Michele McKay Aynesworth
On those rainy days, Mario would insist on having some of Grandma's special sugar-coated fritters. Flattered and smiling and only too happy to comply, she'd send Coca to reorganize the junk room or to rid the closets of dust balls. This is how she managed to have the kitchen to herself.

     In that great, dark, solitary house, I could choose to stick around as Grandma's veined hands ever so slowly fashioned her "frittahs," or go with Coca and watch her redo the junk room. Coca called it the attic, but I knew very well from my illustrated dictionary that an attic couldn't be a ground floor cubbyhole looking out on a brick boundary wall. This end of the yard was quiet and moist, with an old rectangle of rusted iron, some flowery tiles, and a faucet for watering the garden – although the faucet had no spigot, and in any case, no one watered the garden. In fact, it was hardly a garden at all. It had no plants or cultivated flowers, just an assortment of weeds and vines, along with pill bugs, ants, ponds, toads, and mice.

     I think I was fourteen before I discovered what the outside of the house looked like. I hardly ever went out, and when I did, I always came and went using the sidewalk on our side of the street, so I knew the houses across the street by heart, but not the one that had sheltered me since I was born. One day I decided not to make any diagonal crossings, just right angles. From the corner, I walked along the sidewalk opposite our house. To my left loomed wire or wrought-iron fences and overgrown plants; to my right, trees imprisoned every few meters in dirt squares. Their cool, restless branches would link up overhead in spring and summer, sifting the sun's rays. But this was a winter day, and dusk had set in. Everything was so sad, the breeze mute and listless, the street empty, the lights dying in high-ceilinged rooms. I don't know why, they made me want to cry, and suddenly I thought of Mirta, an older girl who went to my school.

     I was standing on blue and white mosaic tiles consisting of nine little squares each, and the wind was about to carry off a dirty page from El Gráfico. I stepped on it in time, and without bending over, read, "Musimessi, star goalkeeper for Newell's Old Boys." I let it go, and the paper groaned harshly as it scudded along before ending up in the sewer.

<  2  >
     How gloomy my house was! You could hardly see it. Dark, withered vines covered the rusty black iron grille. Behind it, gray palms, peeling pines, and the almighty rubber plant obscured even the dim outline of our house, whose cracked and stained walls resembled nothing so much as roadmaps. But the gabled roof, its once-red tiles now a muddy violet, stood out in sharp relief against the white sky.

     The house also had an attic, but since Coca slept there it was no longer an attic, but a bedroom. Grandma, of course, called it the maid's room (just as streetcars for her were trolleys, shoes slippers, and the Primera Junta subway line forever The Anglo). I liked the little room with its upside down V for a ceiling and its thick beams of dark wood. Every night Coca would listen to the radio play broadcast by Radio El Mundo on a very old, very tall, and very hard-to-hear radio that towered above a kitchen bench. Half the room was taken up by a huge, three-door mahogany wardrobe with an oval mirror. Inside its doors hung tango singer Carlos Gardel in sky-blue gaucho garb; cowboy actor Robert Taylor; and dapper movie idol Ángel Maga-a, in coat and bowtie. There were also posters of the Virgin of Luján and of the saintly Mapuche Indian boy, Ceferino Namuncurá. On the wall a color photo taken the day of her wedding to Ricardo showed a different Coca, with her hair piled high, her lips red and smooth. A bottle of cologne and a sulfur stick sat on the marble-topped lamp table. The best thing in the room, however, was a window like a porthole with two pink panes that could be opened one at a time.

     And so, when Coca said she was going to clean the attic, it was understood she meant the junk room. And if it pleased Grandma to make fritters for Mario, it was not so much that she liked doing it, but that she could regain a little of her former importance, when it was she who ran the house, when they had not yet put her on the sidelines. Of course, since she was senile (arteriosclerosis, eighty-six years old), her manias and confusion came as no surprise. She could not be blamed for lying or making things up sometimes. Dr. Calvino explained that such maladies were typical of old age, and since there was no cure, it was best just to accept the situation. In any case, Grandma was adorable and didn't bother anybody.

<  3  >
     She would pass autumn and winter afternoons with a shawl across her knees and a scarf around her shoulders, rocking away in an enormous chair that yet seemed lost amid the endless lilac-colored flowers and greenish birds on the living room walls. Sitting there with her hands intertwined, she would think about who knows what, looking out past the black oval table with its crude, crocheted doily. Or she would polish all the metal objects in the house till they shone scandalously in the midst of things so dull and melancholy. I used to bring her bronze candelabra or silver fruit bowls, but Mario put his foot down, saying I was only encouraging her tendency toward what might be called obsession.

     Be that as it may, now that the weather was milder Grandma had taken to wandering about in the yard's many unexplored corners. In the evening she would sit well away from the house on a little straw chair until, at length, Coca would fetch her back inside, citing the dangers of the evening dew. Convincing Grandma to stay in the living room was not easy, however, and every day she spent more time in the garden, usually near the ruined statue. Dr. Calvino advised us to let her have her way so long as she did not catch cold, given the weak state of her bronchial tubes.

     When Mario got up to secure the shutters the night of the Santa Rosa storm, he was shocked to see Grandma out in the rain, a fragile plant being blown about by the raging, icy wind. Dr. Calvino diagnosed pneumonia, and now to senility was added delirium. Grandma started seeing little men. "Little men?" Right, the little men in yellow shorts and red jackets with tall black boots on their feet and blue velvet caps on their heads. It was no good interrupting her with the news that Telma had given birth to twins or showing her the sheets Aunt Marcelina had just finished embroidering. The city of little men was called Natania and consisted mainly of woods, towers, and bridges; the fortress of the king and his three ministers was guarded by winged lions and eagle-headed bulls. "By statues of lions and bulls?" No, by flesh and blood lions and bulls.

<  4  >
     Dr. Calvino put on the special face that family doctors will assume, and the house became an obligatory stop for commiserating cousins, however distant. When finally the old lady's delicate little life expired completely, the undertakers showed up with the absurd trappings of death. They set up a funeral chapel in the room where Grandma used to polish her metals, and the coffin handles shone as if she had buffed them herself. The aunts, one of whom was still single, recalled how as a young girl Grandma was always ready and willing to work, while the uncles – notaries and lawyers all – sipped coffee and cognac and weighed the chances of Balb'n-Frondizi versus Perón-Quijano in the upcoming presidential elections.

     I passed the night viewing a procession of faces (with an occasional thought for Mirta) until, deserting the wake, I took refuge in the garden's thick tangle of plants, surrounded by scraggy palms and blue bellflowers that died almost as soon as they were plucked. Remembering her there, with her glasses and her black coat, I cried, though quietly.

     Since Grandma was no longer around to be scandalized, Mario allowed a so-called fiancé to move in with Coca (now separated from the Ricardo in the color photo). He turned out to be a grim sort, with little hair, bad manners, and no words. During the first week, returning from I don't know where, and always at about the same time of day, he would spend the afternoons gazing out the round window at the house opposite ours. Saturday he showed a perversely creative streak. Things were just fine as they were, but with Mario's consent, he embarked on a brutal revolution.

     He planned to start with the yard, no less, cutting down weeds, sowing grass, cultivating flowers. And then the garden would be nothing more than a garden — smooth and clear and clean. No longer would I be able to think and play in secret, mysterious places. No longer could I go where the fattest palm, the wild privet hedge, and the fallen statue covered in moss and lichen (as my eighth-grade botany text would say) formed a private space.

<  5  >
     The statue's base was completely hidden by weeds, but below it — if someone were able to lift the heavy thing — the ground was flat and compacted to form a perfect circle. That's where we first began to communicate. The block of marble had been lost in the garden for some time now. A half-blurred little heart and arrow read ELISA AND MARIO, yet Mario had been a widower for more than twenty years.

     A neighborhood dog delayed the garden takeover. Barking and whining day and night, it was a stupid, unbearable dog, and indeed, the boyfriend couldn't bear it. In a gesture typical of the way he went about solving problems, he tossed some poisoned meat over the dividing wall. The neighbors – who for other reasons were just as boorish – filed a complaint with the police, and he had to spend two days in jail.

     Once free, he turned his attention to redoing the inside of the house. Mario was already very old and quite powerless, one more useless thing that, instead of finding a niche in the junk room, found one in the library. With careful, old-fashioned penmanship, he sat copying — why? what for? — romantic, high-sounding poems in a schoolboy's notebook. But the weeks flew by, and the guy had almost finished remodeling and painting the whole house in ever brighter colors. He would soon be attacking the garden.

     He began to clear it, moving in a circle that centered on the house. Of course, there was a good way to go before he reached the statue, so I still had time to talk and get more details. Meanwhile, he pulled up the first weeds, got rid of the cans and rocks that had accumulated over more than twenty-five years of idleness, killed countless innocent toads, and thus completed the first round of the circle. Fortunately, since each new round covered a larger area, his progress became slower by the day.

     At school I was extremely nervous, imagining that he was closing in on Julio the pine tree (when looked at from the proper angle, the knots read JULIO), and, indeed, he had done so. The ground was completely cleared and smoothed down around it. They had already begun an orderly migration, and even though they should have let me know, they never told me where they would settle next. To make matters worse, he passed up his regular Sunday session with the boys, those pool-hall clowns with cigarettes hanging from their mouths, and stayed in the garden drinking maté with Coca and reading lies in the newspaper, so I could make little progress. The next day I had a zoology test, but my eyes kept gravitating toward the window, making it impossible to concentrate. I wasn't in a mood for amoebas and paramecia; I couldn't think about such stupidities, knowing without a doubt that Monday he would get around to the pedestal.

<  6  >
     I went to say good-bye at two in the morning and became so upset I couldn't sleep a wink. Zoology was the last thing on my mind. I tried cheating, but the teacher caught me and took away my test. At last, sitting there on the school bench in peace and comfort, I was able to recall once more the little men in yellow shorts and red jackets with tall black boots on their feet and blue velvet caps on their heads.

 

First published by Fernando Sorrentino in Imperios y servidumbres, Barcelona, Editorial Seix Barral, 1972.

 

[nusrat-diu]

 
 


Alison L. Randall
End of the Line
When Frank and I stepped through the post office doors, there was a crowd gathered, gawking at the new fixture on the wall like a chorus of wide-mouthed frogs. I had to get closer, and that was where being a girl that's scrawnier than a wire fence came in handy. Fortunately, Frank, my twin of eleven years, was just the same.

     "Come on." I said, grabbing his hand, and we slid through the cracks between people until we spilled out in front.

     Finally I got a good look. It was fixed to the plaster next to the postmaster's window, the place of honor usually reserved for the Wanted posters. Beady-eyed Zedekiah Smith, the bank robber, still hung there, but even he had been pushed aside for something more important.

     A telephone. The first one in town.

     "How's it work?" Noah Crawford called out. Noah's the best fix-it man around, and I could tell he was itching to get his fingers on those shiny knobs.

     "Don't rightly know," answered the postmaster, and he tugged at his goatee as if it might tell him. "I do know the sound of your voice moves along wires strung on poles. It's sort of like the telegraph, only you hear words instead of dots and dashes."

     "Ah," the crowd murmured, and I felt my own mouth move along.

     I gazed at that gleaming wood box and something happened inside me. Something — I can only guess — that might be like falling in love. The thought of talking into that box — of making my voice sail through wires in the sky — it took over my brain. I couldn't get it out.

     "Frank," I whispered to my twin. "I have to use that telephone."

     Five minutes later, Frank towed me up Main Street, toward home. "Liza — " he began, but I cut him off. We two thought so much alike, I had Frank's questions answered before he even asked.

<  2  >
     "You're right," I said. "It costs five cents and I don't have it. But look." I pulled him over to the window of Poulson's Variety Store. "You see those?"

     I pointed to a handful of shimmery rocks spread on black velvet. Some were a shiny gray shot through with gold streaks, others yellow as cheese curds. And one, clear and jagged, sat like an icicle, leftover from wintertime.

     Frank's eyebrows screwed up and I could tell he wasn't following.

     "If I found one of those, I bet they'd pay me for it." I explained.

     With a shake of his head, Frank hooked two thumbs under his suspenders. "But Liza — "

     I held up a hand — he couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. "I've got that figured, too. I'll bet we could find some at North Creek — in the mine."

     Frank shrugged, pretending not to care, but I knew better. He wanted to explore that old mine, same as me. Besides, Frank knew he had no choice. Twins stick together, especially scrawny ones, 'cause it takes two of us to make one of most people.

     We spent half the morning on the dusty road to North Creek. Ma packed a lunch but said she couldn't understand walking all that way for rocks. She thought we were off to search the dry creek bed, and I didn't correct her.

     I felt a bit guilty about fooling my ma, but whenever a pang hit, I conjured up the vision of my voice dancing along wires in the sky. It looked a lot like me, my voice did, only wearing a pink tutu and carrying a frilly umbrella.

     We reached the old mine around noon. The hole in the sage-covered hill had been shored up by timbers. They were weathered and splintery, and looked like a picture frame around nothing.

<  3  >
     I stepped inside, my arms turning to goose bumps from the chill. The air smelled of mildew and rotted beams, but also of horse sweat and wood smoke. Strange. That mine had sat empty for years.

     Once my eyes got used to the dim, I gazed around, hoping to see shimmery rocks littering the floor, but dust was all I saw. Frank walked past me to where the walls narrowed, then disappeared around the curve. I followed fast.

     I'd come up right behind Frank when, ting, his boot connected with metal. He stooped, grabbed, and when he stood, his palm held more than we'd hoped.

     A gold coin. Frank's eyes nearly popped.

     "Where did that come from?" I whispered and reached out a finger to touch.

     Just then, voices sounded in the next cavern over: "Zed, hold it higher." Two men stepped through a gap in the far wall.

     They weren't miners. I could tell that from one glance. They were dressed for riding, with leather chaps and spurs. One held saddlebags over a shoulder and had a mustache that hung past his jaw. The other wore a battered hat, his face hid in its shadow. When he raised his lantern, the light shone full on those beady eyes.

     It was Zedekiah Smith, the bank robber.

     I plastered myself to the wall, hoping to disappear into shadow. Frank hunched over, hiding his head in his sleeves. But for once, we weren't scrawny enough.

     "Hey!" The mustached man pointed, then dropped his saddlebags and ran for us.

     I tried to run, too, but met up with Frank's backside. The next thing I knew, Frank and I were on the ground, being hauled to our feet by a sharp-nailed hand.

     "Lookee here, Zed," our captor cried, "a couple of spies."

<  4  >
     "No," I said, brushing myself off. "We're not spies. We were looking for rocks to sell. There's a new telephone in town, and I just wanted to — Ow!"

     The mustache man yanked my hair. "Does she always talk this much?" he asked Frank. Frank — the traitor — nodded.

     "Looking for rocks, eh?" Mustache Man pried open Frank's fingers. The gold coin glowed warm in the lantern light. "Lookee here, Zed. Musta fallen out."

     Zedekiah Smith strode over and picked the coin out of Frank's palm. "You don't want that, boy. That's dirty money."

     "You made it that way," I told him. "You stole it."

     Zedekiah Smith narrowed his eyes, turning them even beadier. "Caleb's right. You do talk a lot."

     Five minutes later, Frank and I were back to back on the ground.

     "That's what you get," Caleb said, as he tied our hands behind us. "Shouldn't go poking your noses in bad places."

     "It wouldn't be bad without you," I said, and Frank twitched.

     "Sure it would," Caleb said. "Old mine's a dangerous place. You could've got caught in a cave-in, or bit by rattlers. Lucky you got us instead. He, he!" He tightened his knots then stood straight. "Someone will find you in a day or so. We'll be long gone by then. Right Zed?"

     "That's right." Zedekiah Smith stood back, watching Caleb do the dirty work, his eyes shaded again.

     "Just let us go," I begged. "We won't tell."

     "Ha!" Caleb shouldered the saddlebags. "I'd like to see you keep your mouth still."

     Zedekiah Smith took up the lantern and without looking back they passed through the opening in the rock wall. I listened until the jingle of their spurs faded.

<  5  >
     We were alone in dark so thick it stopped up my nose. Caleb was right. This was a bad place. I wouldn't last a day. And worse, when Ma found my lifeless body, she'd know I was a liar.

     I was about to sink into despair, but Frank distracted me with more twitching.

     "There," he said. "I'm free."

     I couldn't believe it when the ropes went slack. Jumping to my feet, I rubbed my wrists, trying to figure how Frank had managed to surprise me so. It wasn't that he'd worked his bony wrists out of Caleb's knots. That was plain Frank. The real surprise was that he'd come up with the idea without my help.

     "Phew," I said, relief washing over me at my second chance at life. Ma wouldn't have to find my lifeless body after all. And as for the liar part, well, I'd work on that.

     But first, I had another good deed in mind, the best way to begin my new life. I was about to turn in that outlaw.

     I grabbed Frank's arm and towed him toward the exit. "We need to get to town and report Zedekiah Smith." Then something else occurred to me. "Think of the telephone calls I could make with that reward money."

     'Liza — " Frank started up, but I knew where he was heading.

     "Of course we'll split it."

     We rounded the wall and ran smack into another, one with chaps and a hat. Zedekiah Smith was back. Before we could move, he had us trussed in his arms like two pigs for slaughter.

     "Let go!" I cried, pounding his chest.

     "Shh," he whispered. "Caleb thinks I forgot something."

     I froze. "But . . . "

<  6  >
     "I came back to cut you loose."

     For once, I had a hard time filling my mouth with words.

     "Now, you stay hidden until I get Caleb away," he whispered. "It won't do to have him telling people about my weak stomach."

     "Are you feeling poorly?" Frank asked and Zedekiah Smith laughed.

     "No, but I've got no stomach for hurting people." His arms went limp, releasing us, and he took a step back. "You'd better do your duty and report me. But take this in case that reward money's long in coming." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pale yellow rock studded with honey-colored crystals. "I saw it out in the dry creek bed. Might be worth a telephone call."

     He dropped it into my hand and gave a wink. Then he turned and walked out into the sunlight. Frank and I gawked, like a duet of wide-mouthed frogs.

     We didn't make it to the Sheriff's office until the next morning. I reported Zedekiah Smith, just like I should, but for some reason, it didn't feel like a good deed anymore.

     Our next stop was the Variety Store. Old Mr. Poulson's eyes kindled when he saw the crystal rock. Twenty-five cents went to Frank, who wasted it on candy. I saved mine for something monumental.

     The post office wasn't crowded anymore. Still, there were a few lookers as I walked to the counter and laid down my nickel.

     "I'd like to make a telephone call," I announced.

     "How about that," the postmaster said, stroking his goatee. "You'll be the first. Who would you like to call?"

     "Who?" I echoed. And just like that, my vision dissolved. Pink tutu and frilly umbrella, both drifted off like a dandelion in the wind. My voice couldn't dance along wires — it had no place to go. Nobody I knew had a telephone.

<  7  >
     I turned to Frank and found him grinning.

     "You saw it all along," I accused.

     He shrugged. "I tried to tell you."

     "You did?" I thought back to the day before and realized that maybe he had. I'd been too busy using my own mouth to notice.

     After taking one last, loving look at the telephone, I turned away from the counter. Maybe candy would be a good use for that nickel after all.

     "Frank," I said, pondering those thoughts he kept having without me, "next time you have something to say, speak up. I'll try hard to listen."

     The poster of Zedekiah Smith seemed to nod at me as we passed.

 

[nusrat-diu]

Hans Christian Andersen
Thumbelina

There was once a woman who wished very much to have a little child, but she could not obtain her wish. At last she went to a fairy, and said, "I should so very much like to have a little child; can you tell me where I can find one?"

     "Oh, that can be easily managed," said the fairy. "Here is a barleycorn of a different kind to those which grow in the farmer's fields, and which the chickens eat; put it into a flower-pot, and see what will happen."

     "Thank you," said the woman, and she gave the fairy twelve shillings, which was the price of the barleycorn. Then she went home and planted it, and immediately there grew up a large handsome flower, something like a tulip in appearance, but with its leaves tightly closed as if it were still a bud.

     "It is a beautiful flower," said the woman, and she kissed the red and golden-colored leaves, and while she did so the flower opened, and she could see that it was a real tulip. Within the flower, upon the green velvet stamens, sat a very delicate and graceful little maiden. She was scarcely half as long as a thumb, and they gave her the name of "Thumbelina," or Tiny, because she was so small. A walnut-shell, elegantly polished, served her for a cradle; her bed was formed of blue violet-leaves, with a rose-leaf for a counterpane. Here she slept at night, but during the day she amused herself on a table, where the woman had placed a plateful of water. Round this plate were wreaths of flowers with their stems in the water, and upon it floated a large tulip-leaf, which served Tiny for a boat. Here the little maiden sat and rowed herself from side to side, with two oars made of white horse-hair. It really was a very pretty sight. Tiny could, also, sing so softly and sweetly that nothing like her singing had ever before been heard.

     One night, while she lay in her pretty bed, a large, ugly, wet toad crept through a broken pane of glass in the window, and leaped right upon the table where Tiny lay sleeping under her rose-leaf quilt. "What a pretty little wife this would make for my son," said the toad, and she took up the walnut-shell in which little Tiny lay asleep, and jumped through the window with it into the garden.

<  2  >
     In the swampy margin of a broad stream in the garden lived the toad, with her son. He was uglier even than his mother, and when he saw the pretty little maiden in her elegant bed, he could only cry, "Croak, croak, croak."

     "Don't speak so loud, or she will wake," said the toad, "and then she might run away, for she is as light as swan's down. We will place her on one of the water-lily leaves out in the stream; it will be like an island to her, she is so light and small, and then she cannot escape; and, while she is away, we will make haste and prepare the state-room under the marsh, in which you are to live when you are married."

     Far out in the stream grew a number of water-lilies, with broad green leaves, which seemed to float on the top of the water. The largest of these leaves appeared farther off than the rest, and the old toad swam out to it with the walnut-shell, in which little Tiny lay still asleep.

     The tiny little creature woke very early in the morning, and began to cry bitterly when she found where she was, for she could see nothing but water on every side of the large green leaf, and no way of reaching the land.

     Meanwhile the old toad was very busy under the marsh, decking her room with rushes and wild yellow flowers, to make it look pretty for her new daughter-in-law. Then she swam out with her ugly son to the leaf on which she had placed poor little Tiny. She wanted to fetch the pretty bed, that she might put it in the bridal chamber to be ready for her. The old toad bowed low to her in the water, and said, "Here is my son, he will be your husband, and you will live happily in the marsh by the stream."

     "Croak, croak, croak," was all her son could say for himself; so the toad took up the elegant little bed, and swam away with it, leaving Tiny all alone on the green leaf, where she sat and wept. She could not bear to think of living with the old toad, and having her ugly son for a husband.

<  3  >
     The little fishes, who swam about in the water beneath, had seen the toad, and heard what she said, so they lifted their heads above the water to look at the little maiden. As soon as they caught sight of her, they saw she was very pretty, and it made them very sorry to think that she must go and live with the ugly toads. "No, it must never be!" So they assembled together in the water, round the green stalk which held the leaf on which the little maiden stood, and gnawed it away at the root with their teeth. Then the leaf floated down the stream, carrying Tiny far away out of reach of land.

     Tiny sailed past many towns, and the little birds in the bushes saw her, and sang, "What a lovely little creature;" so the leaf swam away with her farther and farther, till it brought her to other lands.

     A graceful little white butterfly constantly fluttered round her, and at last alighted on the leaf. Tiny pleased him, and she was glad of it, for now the toad could not possibly reach her, and the country through which she sailed was beautiful, and the sun shone upon the water, till it glittered like liquid gold. She took off her girdle and tied one end of it round the butterfly, and the other end of the ribbon she fastened to the leaf, which now glided on much faster than ever, taking little Tiny with it as she stood.

     Presently a large cockchafer flew by; the moment he caught sight of her, he seized her round her delicate waist with his claws, and flew with her into a tree. The green leaf floated away on the brook, and the butterfly flew with it, for he was fastened to it, and could not get away.

     Oh, how frightened little Tiny felt when the cockchafer flew with her to the tree! But especially was she sorry for the beautiful white butterfly which she had fastened to the leaf, for if he could not free himself he would die of hunger. But the cockchafer did not trouble himself at all about the matter. He seated himself by her side on a large green leaf, gave her some honey from the flowers to eat, and told her she was very pretty, though not in the least like a cockchafer.

<  4  >
     After a time, all the cockchafers turned up their feelers, and said, "She has only two legs! how ugly that looks."

     "She has no feelers," said another. "Her waist is quite slim. Pooh! she is like a human being."

     "Oh! she is ugly," said all the lady cockchafers, although Tiny was very pretty. Then the cockchafer who had run away with her, believed all the others when they said she was ugly, and would have nothing more to say to her, and told her she might go where she liked. Then he flew down with her from the tree, and placed her on a daisy, and she wept at the thought that she was so ugly that even the cockchafers would have nothing to say to her. And all the while she was really the loveliest creature that one could imagine, and as tender and delicate as a beautiful rose-leaf.

     During the whole summer poor little Tiny lived quite alone in the wide forest. She wove herself a bed with blades of grass, and hung it up under a broad leaf, to protect herself from the rain. She sucked the honey from the flowers for food, and drank the dew from their leaves every morning. So passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the winter - the long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung to her so sweetly were flown away, and the trees and the flowers had withered. The large clover leaf under the shelter of which she had lived, was now rolled together and shrivelled up, nothing remained but a yellow withered stalk. She felt dreadfully cold, for her clothes were torn, and she was herself so frail and delicate, that poor little Tiny was nearly frozen to death.

     It began to snow too; and the snow-flakes, as they fell upon her, were like a whole shovelful falling upon one of us, for we are tall, but she was only an inch high. Then she wrapped herself up in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep her warm, and she shivered with cold.

<  5  >
     Near the wood in which she had been living lay a corn-field, but the corn had been cut a long time; nothing remained but the bare dry stubble standing up out of the frozen ground. It was to her like struggling through a large wood. Oh! how she shivered with the cold.

     She came at last to the door of a field-mouse, who had a little den under the corn-stubble. There dwelt the field-mouse in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of corn, a kitchen, and a beautiful dining room. Poor little Tiny stood before the door just like a little beggar-girl, and begged for a small piece of barley-corn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for two days.

     "You poor little creature," said the field-mouse, who was really a good old field-mouse, "come into my warm room and dine with me." She was very pleased with Tiny, so she said, "You are quite welcome to stay with me all the winter, if you like; but you must keep my rooms clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I shall like to hear them very much."

     And Tiny did all the field-mouse asked her, and found herself very comfortable.

     "We shall have a visitor soon," said the field-mouse one day; "my neighbor pays me a visit once a week. He is better off than I am; he has large rooms, and wears a beautiful black velvet coat. If you could only have him for a husband, you would be well provided for indeed. But he is blind, so you must tell him some of your prettiest stories."

     But Tiny did not feel at all interested about this neighbor, for he was a mole. However, he came and paid his visit dressed in his black velvet coat.

     "He is very rich and learned, and his house is twenty times larger than mine," said the field-mouse.

     He was rich and learned, no doubt, but he always spoke slightingly of the sun and the pretty flowers, because he had never seen them. Tiny was obliged to sing to him, "Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home," and many other pretty songs. And the mole fell in love with her because she had such a sweet voice; but he said nothing yet, for he was very cautious.

<  6  >
     A short time before, the mole had dug a long passage under the earth, which led from the dwelling of the field-mouse to his own, and here she had permission to walk with Tiny whenever she liked. But he warned them not to be alarmed at the sight of a dead bird which lay in the passage. It was a perfect bird, with a beak and feathers, and could not have been dead long, and was lying just where the mole had made his passage. The mole took a piece of phosphorescent wood in his mouth, and it glittered like fire in the dark; then he went before them to light them through the long, dark passage. When they came to the spot where lay the dead bird, the mole pushed his broad nose through the ceiling, the earth gave way, so that there was a large hole, and the daylight shone into the passage. In the middle of the floor lay a dead swallow, his beautiful wings pulled close to his sides, his feet and his head drawn up under his feathers; the poor bird had evidently died of the cold. It made little Tiny very sad to see it, she did so love the little birds; all the summer they had sung and twittered for her so beautifully. But the mole pushed it aside with his crooked legs, and said, "He will sing no more now. How miserable it must be to be born a little bird! I am thankful that none of my children will ever be birds, for they can do nothing but cry, 'Tweet, tweet,' and always die of hunger in the winter."

     "Yes, you may well say that, as a clever man!" exclaimed the field-mouse, "What is the use of his twittering, for when winter comes he must either starve or be frozen to death. Still birds are very high bred."

     Tiny said nothing; but when the two others had turned their backs on the bird, she stooped down and stroked aside the soft feathers which covered the head, and kissed the closed eyelids. "Perhaps this was the one who sang to me so sweetly in the summer," she said; "and how much pleasure it gave me, you dear, pretty bird."

<  7  >
     The mole now stopped up the hole through which the daylight shone, and then accompanied the lady home. But during the night Tiny could not sleep; so she got out of bed and wove a large, beautiful carpet of hay; then she carried it to the dead bird, and spread it over him; with some down from the flowers which she had found in the field-mouse's room. It was as soft as wool, and she spread some of it on each side of the bird, so that he might lie warmly in the cold earth.

     "Farewell, you pretty little bird," said she, "farewell; thank you for your delightful singing during the summer, when all the trees were green, and the warm sun shone upon us." Then she laid her head on the bird's breast, but she was alarmed immediately, for it seemed as if something inside the bird went "thump, thump." It was the bird's heart; he was not really dead, only benumbed with the cold, and the warmth had restored him to life. In autumn, all the swallows fly away into warm countries, but if one happens to linger, the cold seizes it, it becomes frozen, and falls down as if dead; it remains where it fell, and the cold snow covers it. Tiny trembled very much; she was quite frightened, for the bird was large, a great deal larger than herself, - she was only an inch high. But she took courage, laid the wool more thickly over the poor swallow, and then took a leaf which she had used for her own counterpane, and laid it over the head of the poor bird.

     The next morning she again stole out to see him. He was alive but very weak; he could only open his eyes for a moment to look at Tiny, who stood by holding a piece of decayed wood in her hand, for she had no other lantern.

     "Thank you, pretty little maiden," said the sick swallow; "I have been so nicely warmed, that I shall soon regain my strength, and be able to fly about again in the warm sunshine."

<  8  >
     "Oh," said she, "it is cold out of doors now; it snows and freezes. Stay in your warm bed; I will take care of you."

     Then she brought the swallow some water in a flower-leaf, and after he had drank, he told her that he had wounded one of his wings in a thorn-bush, and could not fly as fast as the others, who were soon far away on their journey to warm countries. Then at last he had fallen to the earth, and could remember no more, nor how he came to be where she had found him.

     The whole winter the swallow remained underground, and Tiny nursed him with care and love. Neither the mole nor the field-mouse knew anything about it, for they did not like swallows. Very soon the spring time came, and the sun warmed the earth. Then the swallow bade farewell to Tiny, and she opened the hole in the ceiling which the mole had made. The sun shone in upon them so beautifully, that the swallow asked her if she would go with him; she could sit on his back, he said, and he would fly away with her into the green woods. But Tiny knew it would make the field-mouse very grieved if she left her in that manner, so she said, "No, I cannot."

     "Farewell, then, farewell, you good, pretty little maiden," said the swallow; and he flew out into the sunshine.

     Tiny looked after him, and the tears rose in her eyes. She was very fond of the poor swallow.

     "Tweet, tweet," sang the bird, as he flew out into the green woods, and Tiny felt very sad. She was not allowed to go out into the warm sunshine. The corn which had been sown in the field over the house of the field-mouse had grown up high into the air, and formed a thick wood to Tiny, who was only an inch in height.

     "You are going to be married, Tiny," said the field-mouse. "My neighbor has asked for you. What good fortune for a poor child like you. Now we will prepare your wedding clothes. They must be both woollen and linen. Nothing must be wanting when you are the mole's wife."

<  9  >
     Tiny had to turn the spindle, and the field-mouse hired four spiders, who were to weave day and night. Every evening the mole visited her, and was continually speaking of the time when the summer would be over. Then he would keep his wedding-day with Tiny; but now the heat of the sun was so great that it burned the earth, and made it quite hard, like a stone. As soon as the summer was over, the wedding should take place. But Tiny was not at all pleased; for she did not like the tiresome mole. Every morning when the sun rose, and every evening when it went down, she would creep out at the door, and as the wind blew aside the ears of corn, so that she could see the blue sky, she thought how beautiful and bright it seemed out there, and wished so much to see her dear swallow again. But he never returned; for by this time he had flown far away into the lovely green forest.

     When autumn arrived, Tiny had her outfit quite ready; and the field-mouse said to her, "In four weeks the wedding must take place."

     Then Tiny wept, and said she would not marry the disagreeable mole.

     "Nonsense," replied the field-mouse. "Now don't be obstinate, or I shall bite you with my white teeth. He is a very handsome mole; the queen herself does not wear more beautiful velvets and furs. His kitchen and cellars are quite full. You ought to be very thankful for such good fortune."

     So the wedding-day was fixed, on which the mole was to fetch Tiny away to live with him, deep under the earth, and never again to see the warm sun, because he did not like it. The poor child was very unhappy at the thought of saying farewell to the beautiful sun, and as the field-mouse had given her permission to stand at the door, she went to look at it once more.

     "Farewell bright sun," she cried, stretching out her arm towards it; and then she walked a short distance from the house; for the corn had been cut, and only the dry stubble remained in the fields. "Farewell, farewell," she repeated, twining her arm round a little red flower that grew just by her side. "Greet the little swallow from me, if you should see him again."

<  10  >
     "Tweet, tweet," sounded over her head suddenly. She looked up, and there was the swallow himself flying close by. As soon as he spied Tiny, he was delighted; and then she told him how unwilling she felt to marry the ugly mole, and to live always beneath the earth, and never to see the bright sun any more. And as she told him she wept.

     "Cold winter is coming," said the swallow, "and I am going to fly away into warmer countries. Will you go with me? You can sit on my back, and fasten yourself on with your sash. Then we can fly away from the ugly mole and his gloomy rooms, - far away, over the mountains, into warmer countries, where the sun shines more brightly than here; where it is always summer, and the flowers bloom in greater beauty. Fly now with me, dear little Tiny; you saved my life when I lay frozen in that dark passage."

     "Yes, I will go with you," said Tiny; and she seated herself on the bird's back, with her feet on his outstretched wings, and tied her girdle to one of his strongest feathers.

     Then the swallow rose in the air, and flew over forest and over sea, high above the highest mountains, covered with eternal snow. Tiny would have been frozen in the cold air, but she crept under the bird's warm feathers, keeping her little head uncovered, so that she might admire the beautiful lands over which they passed.

     At length they reached the warm countries, where the sun shines brightly, and the sky seems so much higher above the earth. Here, on the hedges, and by the wayside, grew purple, green, and white grapes; lemons and oranges hung from trees in the woods; and the air was fragrant with myrtles and orange blossoms. Beautiful children ran along the country lanes, playing with large gay butterflies; and as the swallow flew farther and farther, every place appeared still more lovely.

     At last they came to a blue lake, and by the side of it, shaded by trees of the deepest green, stood a palace of dazzling white marble, built in the olden times. Vines clustered round its lofty pillars, and at the top were many swallows' nests, and one of these was the home of the swallow who carried Tiny.

<  11  >
     "This is my house," said the swallow; "but it would not do for you to live there - you would not be comfortable. You must choose for yourself one of those lovely flowers, and I will put you down upon it, and then you shall have everything that you can wish to make you happy."

     "That will be delightful," she said, and clapped her little hands for joy.

     A large marble pillar lay on the ground, which, in falling, had been broken into three pieces. Between these pieces grew the most beautiful large white flowers; so the swallow flew down with Tiny, and placed her on one of the broad leaves. But how surprised she was to see in the middle of the flower, a tiny little man, as white and transparent as if he had been made of crystal! He had a gold crown on his head, and delicate wings at his shoulders, and was not much larger than Tiny herself. He was the angel of the flower; for a tiny man and a tiny woman dwell in every flower; and this was the king of them all.

     "Oh, how beautiful he is!" whispered Tiny to the swallow.

     The little prince was at first quite frightened at the bird, who was like a giant, compared to such a delicate little creature as himself; but when he saw Tiny, he was delighted, and thought her the prettiest little maiden he had ever seen. He took the gold crown from his head, and placed it on hers, and asked her name, and if she would be his wife, and queen over all the flowers.

     This certainly was a very different sort of husband to the son of a toad, or the mole, with my black velvet and fur; so she said, "Yes," to the handsome prince. Then all the flowers opened, and out of each came a little lady or a tiny lord, all so pretty it was quite a pleasure to look at them. Each of them brought Tiny a present; but the best gift was a pair of beautiful wings, which had belonged to a large white fly and they fastened them to Tiny's shoulders, so that she might fly from flower to flower. Then there was much rejoicing, and the little swallow who sat above them, in his nest, was asked to sing a wedding song, which he did as well as he could; but in his heart he felt sad for he was very fond of Tiny, and would have liked never to part from her again.

<  12  >
     "You must not be called Tiny any more," said the spirit of the flowers to her. "It is an ugly name, and you are so very pretty. We will call you Maia."

     "Farewell, farewell," said the swallow, with a heavy heart as he left the warm countries to fly back into Denmark. There he had a nest over the window of a house in which dwelt the writer of fairy tales. The swallow sang, "Tweet, tweet," and from his song came the whole story.