Educational > English Language Lab
Short Stories
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.
‘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.
‘What are you thinking about?' Robert asks.
‘I was wondering what drives a man to murder his wife,' Vanessa says.
‘Why don't they just walk out on them?'
‘I don't know,' Robert says. ‘Is it always husbands murdering wives?'
‘Not always,' says Vanessa. ‘But isn't it usually?'
‘I suppose you're right,' Robert says.
‘There was a body found in this lake a few years back. Three men confessed to the murder before the actual murderer was identified.'
‘You mean three hoaxes?'
‘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 >
‘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.
‘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.'
‘Where is the real path?' Vanessa asks.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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 >
‘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.
‘That was Lawrence's father,' he calls through the bathroom door. ‘He's invited us round after dinner this evening.'
‘What's he like?' Vanessa asks. Robert pushes open the bathroom door as though taking her question for an invitation.
‘Nice,' he says. He stands in the door way gazing at her through the steam. Vanessa hopes he isn't going to touch her.
‘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.
‘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.
‘What happened here before Gray and Wordsworth put it on the map?' she calls out to Robert.
‘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.
‘Yes it's very pretty, so long as it stays up on the hills,' she was saying.
‘Snow,' said Robert by way of explanation.
Vanessa folds the map and puts it on the table. In the kitchen Robert swears loudly.
‘Everything OK?' she calls.
‘The soup just boiled over.'
‘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.
‘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 >
‘I thought you were annoyed with me,' he says.
‘Why?'
‘Oh I don't know, you haven't said much since we got back from the walk.'
‘Sorry,' Vanessa says. ‘I'm just in a quiet sort of mood.'
‘What are you thinking about?'
‘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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘What will we talk about?' she asks, thinking aloud.
‘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 >
‘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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘So what have you been up to since you arrived?' he asks setting the teapot on its brass stand by the fire.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘Lawrence said you grew up here,' Robert is saying. The old man confirms this. Vanessa hadn't known.
‘And have you lived here all your life?' she asks.
‘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 >
‘Don't you worry about living so close to the power station?' Robert asks.
‘I'm concerned about it. But at my age there's not much point worrying about dying.' He smiles.
‘What do people round here think about the idea of living on top of a nuclear dump? Robert asks.
‘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.'
‘Aren't people worried?'
‘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.
‘People believe what they want to believe I suppose,' Vanessa says.
‘That doesn't mean there isn't a right and a wrong,' Robert interjects.
‘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.
‘What would Wordsworth have made of it all?' she asks to change the subject.
‘Oh, he'd have hated it,' the old man says.
‘Really?' says Vanessa, uncertain if this is the answer she had expected or not.
‘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 >
‘Would he ever have come near this village?' Robert asks.
‘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.
‘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.'
‘Were you married long?' Vanessa asks.
‘Forty-two years,' the old man says with a smile. ‘I thought she would outlive me.'
‘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.
‘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 >
‘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.
‘This bit always makes me feel a little panicky,' Robert says. ‘The final minutes of the year ticking away. It's unnerving.'
‘You're supposed to think about friends,' Vanessa says.
‘I know,' he says, drinking the whiskey back and taking the bottle to pour himself another. ‘All the same it feels eerie somehow.'
‘Tell me what you've been reading about,' Vanessa says. Robert fits the cork back in the bottle carefully before replying.
‘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.'
‘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.
‘He was really bitter about it,' Robert says.
‘Maybe it was because Wordsworth had changed,' Vanessa volunteers.
‘Maybe,' Robert answers. He seems not to want to discuss it further. ‘What about you?' he asks after a pause.
‘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 >
‘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.
‘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 Ãngel 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.
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