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Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

CAT IN THE RAIN

Ernest Hemingway's importance as a creator of a unique style, as an speaker for the "lost generation", as a humanitarian and an antifascist cannot be overestimated.

"Cat in the Rain", published in the first collection of his short prose - новели (192 S) remains one of the stories most often reprinted, translated and admired by tin- readers. It is also highly characteristic of his individual manner.

There were only two Americans at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs to their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the sea. It also faced the public garden and the war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel - мольберт. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colours of the hotels facing the gardens and the sea. Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened - поблискувати in the rain. It was raining. The Mill dripped from - the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths – дорожки з гравію. The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to the unite up and break again in a long line in the rain.

The motor-cars – легкові авто were gone from the square by the war monument across the square in the doorway – дверний отвір of the cafe a waiter stood looking out the empty square.

The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact – зменшити that she would not be dripped on.

"I'm going down and get that kitty," the American wife said.

"I'll do it," her husband offered - запропонував from the bed.

'No, I'll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table '

The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.

"Don't get wet," he said.

The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed her as she passed the office. He was an old man and very tall.

"Iopiove," the wife said. She liked the hotel-keeper - охоронець.

"Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It's very bad weather. "

He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim – похмура room. The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.

Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in a rubber cape – гумовий плащ was crossing the empty square to the cafe. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves - roof. As she stood in the doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.

"You must not get wet," she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her.

With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path – доріжка з гравію until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright gгееn in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid – покоївка looked up at her.

"Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?"

"There was a cat," said the American girl.

"A cat?"

"Si, il gatto."

' "A cat?" the maid laughed. "A cat in the rain?"

"Yes," she said, "under the table. "Then, "Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty."

When she talked English the maid's face tightened - стяглося.

"Come, Signora," she said. "We must get back inside. You will be wet."

"I suppose so," said the American girl.

They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone – older people, bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance - значуща. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed, reading.

"Did you get the cat?" he asked, putting the book down.

"It was gone."

"Wonder where it went to?" he said, resting his eyes from reading.

She sat down on the bed.

|"I wanted it so much," she said. "I don't know why I wanted it so much, limited – недогледівши that poor kitty. It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain!"

George was reading again.

She went over and sat in front of the mirror of the dressing-table – туалетний столик looking at herself with the hand glass. She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. Then she studied the back of her head and her neck.

"Don't you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?" she asked, looking at her profile again.

George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close – підстрижений коротко like a boy's.

"I like it the way it is."

"I get so tired of it," she said. "I get so tired of looking like a boy."

George shifted - змінив his position in the bed. He hadn't looked away from her since she started to speak.

"You look pretty darn - чертовски nice," he said.

She laid the mirror down on the dresser - костюмер and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark.

"I want to pull - смикнути my hair back tight and smooth – щільне і гладке and make a big knot - вузол at the back that I can feel," she said. "I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap – коліна and purr – мурчати when I stroke her - погляджувати."

"Yeah?" George said from the bed.

"And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes." – (((repetition – повторення))).

"Oh, shut up and get something to read," George said. He was reading again.

His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees.

"Anyway, I want a cat," she said. "I want a cat. I want a cat now – (((repetition))). If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat."

George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square.

Someone knocked at the door. "Avanti," George said. He looked up from his book.

In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoise-shell – пансир черепахи cat pressed tight against - до her and swung down against her body.

"Excuse me," she said, "the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora."

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

THE STRANGER

Katherine Mansfield (pseudonym of Katherine Middleton Murry), in her brief lifetime, published only four collections of short stories, but they have set her among the internationally renowned masters of psychological prose - але вони встановили її серед всесвітньо відомих майстрів психологічної прози. An admirer - шанувальник of the art of Chekhov and de Maupassant, she prefers subdued tones - приглушених тонів and colours and leaves her main message in implication – в підтексті.

"The Stranger", first published in 1922 in «The Garden Party» collection, is a perfect example of her style.

It seemed to the little crowd on the wharf – причал that she was never going to move again. There she lay, immense - величезне, motionless - нерухоме on the grey crinkled – звивистій water, a loop of smoke – петля диму above her, an immense flock of gulls screaming - величезні зграї чайок кричала and diving after the galley droppings in the stem - камбуз посліду в стовбурові . You could just see little couples parading - напоказ little flies walking up and down the dish on the grey wrinkled tablecloth – помята скатертина. Other flies clustered - згрупувалися and swarmed – юрмилися at the edge – на краю. Now there was a gleam of white on the lower deck - the cook's apron or the stewardess perhaps - І був блиск білих на нижній палубі - фартух кухаря або стюардеса, можливо. Now a tiny black spider raced up – підбіг the ladder on to the bridge.

In the front of the crowd a strong-looking, middle-aged man, dressed very well, very snugly –стильно in a grey overcoat - пальто, grey silk scarf, thick gloves and dark felt hat, marched up and down – йшли вгору й вниз, twirling - крутячи his folded - складена umbrella. He seemed to be the leader of the little crowd on the wharf and at the same time to keep them together. He was something between the sheep-dog and the shepherd - вівчарки і пастух.

But what a fool - what a fool he had been not to bring any glasses! There wasn't a pair of glasses between the whole lot of them.

"Curious – цікава thing, Mr Scott, that none of us thought of glasses. We might have been able to stir'em up, eh? We might have managed a little signalling. Don't hesitate to land - Не соромтеся, щоб приземлитися. Natives harmless - Уродженці нешкідливі. Or: A welcome awaits you. All is forgiven. What? Eh?"

Mr Hammond's quick, eager glance – прагнути погляд, so nervous and yet so friendly and confiding- легковірний, took in everybody on the wharf, roped - привязані in even those old chaps lounging against the gangways – притулившись в проходах. They knew, every manjack of them, that Mrs Hammond was on that boat, and he was so tremendously excited - тому надзвичайно радий it never entered his head not to believe that this marvelous – чудовий fact meant something to them too. It warmed - зігрівати his heart towards them. They were, he decided, as decent-порядний a crowd of people - those old chaps over by the gangways - прохід, too - fine, solid –міцних old chaps. What chests - by Jove – яка скриня їй-Богу! And he squared his own – привів в порядок, plunged his thick-gloved hands into his pockets, rocked from heel to toe - гойдався з п'яти на носок.

"Yes, my wife's been in Europe for the last ten months. On a visit to our eldest girl, who was married last year. I brought her up here, as far as Crawford, myself. So I thought I'd better come and fetch - змушу her back. Yes, yes, yes."

The shrewd eyes narrowed again and searched anxiously - Проникливі очі звузилися знову і шукали з тривогою, quickly, the motionless liner - лайнер. Again his overcoat was unbuttoned - розстібнутий. Out came the thin, butter- yellow –масляно-жовтий watch pin – контактний годинник, and for the twentieth - fiftieth - hundredth time he made the calculation.

"Let me see, now, it was two fifteen when the doctor's launch went off – запуск пішов. Two fifteen. It is now exactly twenty-eight minutes past four. That is to say, the doctor's been gone two hours and thirteen minutes. Two hours and thirteen minutes! Wheeooh!' He gave a queer little – трохи дивно half-whistle - звист and snapped - клацнути his watch to again. "But I think we should have been told if there was anything up - don't you, Mr Gaven?"

"Oh, yes, Mr Hammond! I don't think there's anything to - anything to worry about," said Mr Gaven, knocking out his pipe against the heel of his shoe - вибивши трубку каблуком взуття . "At the same time -"

"Quite so! Quite so!" Абсолютно вірно! cried Mr Hammond. "Dashed annoying – рішучість, натиск!" He paced – ходив quickly up and down and came back again to his stand between Mr and Mrs Scott and Mr Gaven.

"It's getting quite dark, too," and he waved his folded umbrella as though the dusk - сутінки at least might have had the decency to keep off for a bit – трохи порядності тримати. But the dusk came slowly, spreading like a slow train over the water. Little Jean Scott dragged at mother's hand - волочився. ПОРІВНЯННЯ

"I wan' my tea, mammy!" she wailed - кричала.

"I expect you do," said Mr Hammond. "I expect all these ladies want their tea." And his kind, flushed, almost pitiful glance roped them all in again- почервонів, майже жалюгідним поглядом заманював їх усіх знову. He wondered whether Janey was having a final cup of tea in the saloon – зала out there. He hoped so; he thought not. It would be just like her not to leave the deck - палуба. In that case perhaps the deck steward would bring her up a cup. If he'd been there he'd have got it for her - somehow. And for a moment he was on deck, standing over her, watching her little hand fold – обіймаючи round the cup in the way she had, while she drank the only cup of tea to be got on board... But now he was back here, and the Lord only knew when that cursed - проклятий Captain would stop hanging about in the stream – тиняються в потоці. He took another turn, up and down, up and down. He walked as far as the cabstand – стоянка таксі to make sure his driver hadn't disappeared; back he swerved again to the little flock huddled in the shelter of the banana crates - згорнув ще раз, щоб мале стадо тулилися в притулок ящиків банана. Little Jean Scott was still wanting her tea. Poor little bcnn.ii' He wished he had a bit of chocolate on him.

"Here, Jean!" he said. "Like a lift up?" And easily, gently, he swung the little girl on to a higher barrel. - Як підняти? І легко, м'яко, він змахнув маленькою дівчинкою на більш високий бочка. The movement of holding her, steadying her, relieved him, wonderfully, lightened his heart - Замах тримаючи її, оберігаючи її, звільнив його, чудово, полегшивши його серце.

"Hold on," he said, keeping an arm round her.

"Oh, don't worry about Jean, Mr Hammond!" said Mrs Scott.

"That's all right, Mrs Scott. No trouble. It's a pleasure. Jean's a little pal-приятель of mine, aren't you, Jean?"

"Yes, Mr Hammond," said Jean, and she ran her finger down the dent of his felt hat- і вона провела пальцем по його вм'ятиному фетровому капелюсі.

But suddenly she caught him by the ear and gave a loud scream. "Look, Mr Hammond! She's moving! Look, she's coming in!"

By Jove! So she was. At last! She was slowly, slowly turning round - обертаючий. A bell sounded far over the water and a great spout of steam gushed into the air - стумінь пари хлинула в повітрі. The gulls rose – чайки зросли; they fluttered - потрепотіли away like bits of white paper - шматки. And whether that deep throbbing – трепотіння was her engines or his heart Mr Hammond couldn't say. He had to nerve – зібратися з силами himself to bear it, whatever it was. At that moment old Captain Johnson, the harbour-master – капітан порту, came striding down - крокуючи the wharf - пристанню, a leather portfolio under his arm - шкіряний портфель під пахвою.

"Jean'11 be all right," said Mr Scott. "I'll hold her. " He was just in time. Mr Hammond had forgotten about Jean. He sprang away to greet old Captain Johnson.

"Well, Captain," the eager, nervous voice rang out again, "you've taken pity on us at last."

"It's no good blaming me - нічого доброго не звинувачуєш мене, Mr Hammond," wheezed –хрипів old Captain Johnson staring – дивлячись at the liner. "You got Mrs Hammond on board, ain't yer?"

"Yes, yes!" said Hammond, and he kept by the harbour-master's – порт капітана side. "Mrs Hammond's there. Hullo! We shan't be long now!"

With her telephone ring-ringing, the thrum of her crew filling the air - бринькати екіпажу наповнюючи повітря, the big liner bore down - навалився on them, cutting sharp –шахваювати through the dark water so that big white shavings –обрізання curled to the either side. Hammond and the harbour-master kept in front of the rest. Hammond took off his hat; he raked the decks – обстріляли палубу - they were crammed –переповнена with passengers; he waved his hat and bawled - загорлав a loud, strange "Hul-lo!" across the water, and then turned round and burst out laughing and said something - nothing - to old Captain Johnson.

"Seen her?" asked the harbour-master.

"No, not yet. Steady - стережися - wait a bit!" And suddenly, between two grcttl clumsy – незграбні idiots - "Get out of the way there!" he signed with his umbrella - he saw a hand raised - a white glove shaking a handkerchief хустка. Another moment, and - thank God, thank God! - there she was. There was Janey. There was Mrs Hammond, yes, yes, yes - standing by the rail залізниця and smiling and nodding хитаючи and waving her handkerchief.

"Well, that's first class - first class! Well, well, well!" He positively stamped - натиснув. Like lightning he drew out his cigar-case and offered it to old Captain Johnson. "Have a cigar, Captain! They're pretty good. Have a couple! Here" - and he pressed all the cigars in the case of the harbour-master - "I've a couple of boxes up at the hotel. "

"Thanks, Mr Hammond!" wheezed –прохрипів old Captain Johnson.

Hammond stuffed - напихав the cigar-case back. His hands were shaking - тряслися, but he'd got hold of himself again. He was able to face Janey. There she was, leaning on the rail - leaning on the rail, talking to some woman and at the same time watching him, ready for him. It struck - вразило him, as the gulf потік of water closed, how small she looked on that huge ship. His heart was wrung – зжималось with such a spasm that he could have cried out. How little she looked to have come all that long way and back by herself! Just like her, though. Just like Janey. She had the courage – сміливість of a - And now the crew had come forward and parted the passengers - Екіпаж вийшов вперед і розсунув пасажирів; they had lowered the rails for the gangways знизив рейки для проходів.

The voices on shore and the voices on board flew to greet each other.

"All well?"

"All well."

"How's mother?"

"Much better."

"Hullo, Jean!"

"Hullo, Aun' Emily!"

"Had a good voyage?"

"Splendid!" чудовий

"Shan't be long now!"

"Not long now."

The engines двигуни stopped. Slowly she edged to the wharf-side сторона причалу.

"Make way there - make way - make way!" And the wharf набережна hands – екіпаж brought the heavy gangways-дороги along at a sweeping run широкі перспективи. Hammond signed to Janey to stand where she was. The old harbour-master stepped forward; he followed. As to "ladies first", or any row - рядок like that, it never entered his head.

"After you, Captain!" he cried genially добродушно. And treading ступаючи on the old man's heels - підбори, he strode up the gangway on to the deck in a bee-line піднявся по трапу на палубу в Бі-Лайн to Janey, and Janey was clasped стиснута in his arms.

"Well, well, well! Yes, yes! Here we are at last!" he stammered пробурмотів він. It was all he could say. And Janey emerged зявилася, and her cool little voice - the only voice in the world for him - said.

"Well, darling! Have you been waiting long?"

No; not long. Or, at any rate, it didn't matter. It was over now. But the point was, he had a cab waiting at the end of the wharf. Was she ready to go off? Was her luggage ready? In that case they could cut off with her cabin luggage and let the rest go hang загрожувати until to-morrow. He bent нахилити over her and she looked up with her familiar half-smile. She was just the same. Not a day changed. Just as he'd always known her. She laid her small hand on his sleeve рукав.

"How are the children, John?" she asked.

(Hang the children!) "Perfectly well. Never better in their lives!"

"Haven't they sent me letters?'

"Yes, yes - of course! I've left them at the hotel for you to digest подумати later on."

"We can't go quite настільки so fast," said she. "I've got people to say good-bye to -and then there's the Captain. " As his face fell she gave his arm a small understanding squeeze розуміння стиск. "If the Captain comes off the bridge I want you to thank him for having looked after your wife so beautifully. " Well, he'd got her. If she wanted another ten minutes—As he gave way she was surrounded оточена. The whole first-class seemed to want to say good-bye to Janey.

"Good-bye, dear Mrs Hammond! And next time you are in Sydney I'll expect you."

"Darling Mrs Hammond! You won't forget to write to me, will you?"

"Well, Mrs Hammond, what this boat would have been without you!"

It was as plain as a pikestaff - ясний як день that she was by far the most popular woman on board. And she took it all just as usual. Absolutely composed улагоджено. Just her little self-just Janey all over; standing there with her veil вуаль thrown back. Hammond never noticed what his wife had on. It was all the same to him whatever she wore. But to-day he did notice that she wore a black "costume" - didn't they call it? - with white frills викрутаси, trimmings оздоблення he supposed they were, at the neck and sleeves. All this while Janey handed him round.

"John, dear!" And then: "I want to introduce you to -"

Finally they did escape, and she led the way to her stateroom бігти, і вона привела шлях до її каюти. To follow Janey down the passage прохід that she knew so well - that was so strange to him; to part the green curtains - завіси after her and to step into the cabin that had been hers gave him exquisite happiness - вишукане щастя. But - confound змішувати it! - the stewardess was there on the floor, strapping up звязувати the rugs.

"That's the last, Mrs Hammond," said the stewardess, rising and pulling down her cuffs потягуючи вниз її зарукавки.

He was introduced again, and then Janey and the stewardess disappeared into the passage коридор. He heard whisperings. She was getting the tipping перекидний busincH* over, he supposed. He sat down on the striped смугастий sofa диван and took his hat oil There were the rugs she had taken with her; they looked good as new. All hrt luggage looked fresh, perfect. The labels were written in her beautiful little clear hand - "Mrs John Hammond".

"Mrs John Hammond!" He gave a long sigh зітхання of content задоволення and leaned back відкинутись назад, crossing his arms. схрестивши руки на грудях. The strain напруга пройшла was over. He felt he could have sat there forevn sighing his relief at being rid of that horrible tug, pull, grip on his heart. зітхаючи його полегшенню на час позбутися цього жахливого ривком зняти, зчеплення на його серце. Thl danger was over. That was the feeling. They were on dry land again. But ill that moment Janey's head came round the corner.

"Darling - do you mind? I just want to go and say goodbye to the doctor."

Hammond started up. "I'll come with you."

"No, no!" she said. "Don't bother. I'd rather not. I'll not be a minute."

And before he could answer she was gone. He had half a mind to run after her; but instead he sat down again.

Would she really not be long? What was the time now? Out came the watch; he stared at nothing. That was rather queer дивно of Janey, wasn't it? Why couldn't she have told the stewardess to say good-bye for her? Why did she have to go chasing after the ship's doctor? She could have sent a note from the hotel even if the affair had been urgent. Urgent? Did it - could it mean that she had been ill on the voyage - she was keeping something from him? That was it! He seized схопити his hat. He was going off to find that fellow and to wring вимагати the truth out of him at all costs. He thought he'd noticed just something. ^; She was just a touch too calm - too steady постійний. From the very first moment -

The curtain завіса rang. Janey was back. He jumped to his feet.

"Janey, have you been ill on this voyage? You have!"

"111?" Her airy легкий little voice mocked насміхатися him. She stepped over переступити the rugs, came up close, touched his breast груди, and looked up at him.

"Darling," she said, "don't frighten me. Of course I haven't! Whatever makes you think I have? Do I look ill?"

But Hammond didn't see her. He only felt that she was looking at him and that there was no need to worry about anything. She was here to look after things. It was all right. It was all right. Everything was.

The gentle pressure мякий тиск of her hand was so calming that he put his over hers to hold it there. And she said:

"Stand still. I want to look at you. I haven't seen you yet. You've had your beard beautifully trimmed борода красиво оброблений, and you look - younger, I think, and decidedly thinner рішуче тонше! Bachelor life agrees with you."

"Agrees with me!" He groaned застогнав for love and caught her close again. And again, as always, he had the feeling he was holding something that never was quite his - his. Something too delicate, too precious дорогоцінне, that would fly away once he let go.

"For God's sake let's get off to the hotel so that we can be by ourselves." And he rang the bell hard for some one to look sharp with the luggage.

Walking down the wharf together she took his arm. He had her on his arm again. And the difference it made to get into the cab after Janey - to throw the red-and-yellow striped blanket смугасті ковдри round them both - to tell the driver to hurry because neither of them had had any tea. No more going without his tea or pouring out his own. She was back. He turned to her, squeezed стискуючи her hand, and said gently, teasingly дражнячи, in the "special" voice he had for her: "Glad to be home again, dearie?" She smiled; she didn't even bother to answer, but gently she drew his hand away as they came to the brighter streets. <... >

"We've got the best room in the hotel," he said. "1 wouldn't be put off with another. And I asked the chambermaid покоївка to put in a bit of a fire in case you felt chilly. She's a nice, attentive girl. And I thought now we were here we wouldn't bother to go home tomorrow, but spend the day looking round and leave the morning after. Does that suit you? There's no hurry, is there? The children will have you soon enough... I thought a day's sightseeing might make a nice break in your journey - eh honey?'

"Have you taken the tickets for the day after?" she asked.

"I should think I have!" He unbuttoned his overcoat and took out his bulging pocket-book. Опуклий гаманець "Here we are! I reserved a first-class carriage карета to Salisbury. There it is - "Mr and Mrs John Hammond". I thought we might as well do ourselves comfortably, and we don't want other people butting in лізти , do we? But if you like to stop here a bit longer - ?'

"Oh, no!" said Janey quickly, "not for the world! The day after tomorrow, then. And the children -"

But they had reached the hotel. The manager was standing in the broad, brilliantly-lighted porch веранда. He came down to greet them. A porter швейцар ran from the hall for their boxes.

"Well, Mr Arnold, here's Mrs Hammond at last!

The manager led them through the hall himself and pressed the elevator- bell ліфт. Hammond knew there were business pals приятелі of his sitting at the little hall tables having a drink before dinner. But he wasn't going to risk interruption, he looked neither to the right nor the left. They could think what they pleased задоволені If they didn't understand, the more fools they - and he stepped out of the lill. unlocked the door of their room, and shepherded провів Janey in. The door shul Now, at last, they were alone together. He turned up the light. The curtains were drawn; the fire blazed палав. He flung кинув his hat on to the huge bed and went towards her.

But - would you believe it! - again they were interrupted. This time il was the porter with the luggage. He made two journeys of it, leaving the dooi open in between, taking his time, whistling свистячи through his teeth in the corridor Hammond paced up ходити and down the room, tearing off видираючи his gloves, tearing off his scarf. Finally he flung his overcoat on to the bedside.

At last the fool was gone. The door clicked. Now they were alone. Said Hammond: "I feel I'll never have yoifto myself again. These cursed прокляті, недоброзичливі people! Janey" - and he bent his flushed схилив розчервонілий, eager gaze upon her - "let's have dinner up here. If we go down to the restaurant we'll be interrupted, and then there's the confounded помішана music (the music he'd praised so highly, applauded so loudly last night оцінив так високо, так голосно аплодували минулої ночі). We shan't be able to hear each other speak. Let's have something up here in front of the fire. It's too late for tea. I'll order a little supper, shall I? How does the idea strike you вразити?"

"Do, darling!" said Janey. "And while you're away - the children's letters"

"Oh, later on will do!" said Hammond.

"But then we'd get it over," said Janey. "And I'd first have time to -"

"Oh, I needn't go down!" explained Hammond. "I'll just ring and give the order... you don't want to send me away, do you?"

Janey shook her head and smiled.

"But you're thinking of something else. You're worrying about something," said Hammond. "What is it? Come and sit here - come and sit on my knee before the fire."

"I'll just unpin my hat," said Janey, and she went over to the dressing- table туал. столик. "A-ah!" She gave a little cry.

"What is it?"

"Nothing, darling. I've just found the children's letters. That's all right! They will keep. No hurry now!" She turned to him clasping стискаючи them. She tucked ховати them into her frilled гофрована blouse... She cried quickly, gaily радісно: "Oh, how typical this dressing-table is of you!"

"Why? What's the matter with it?" said Hammond.

"If it were floating in eternity плаваючі у вічність I should say «John!»", laughed Janey, staring at the big bottle of hair tonic, the wicker плетені bottle of eau-de-Cologiu\ On Kvn hair brushes гребінці, and a dozen new collars tied with pink tape десятка новими хомутами пов'язали з рожевою стрічкою . "Is this alI yoni 11inmk<''"

"Hang my luggage!" said Hammond; but all the same he liked bcrny laughed at by Janey. "Let's talk. Let's get down to things. Tell me" mid ir. Janey perched on his knees he leaned back and drew her into the deep, ugly chair сидіти на колінах, він відкинувся назад і посадив її в глибокий, потворний стілець - "Tell me you're really glad to be back, Janey."

"Yes, darling, I am glad," she said.

But just as when he embraced - обняв her he felt she would fly away, so Hammond never knew - never knew for dead certain that she was as glad as he was. How could he know? Would he ever know? Would he always have this craving - this pang like hunger тяга - це гостра біль як голод , somehow, to make Janey so much part of him that there wasn't any of her to escape втікати? He wanted to blot out викреслити everybody, everything. He wished now he'd turned off the light. That might have brought her nearer. And now those letters from the children rustled - шелестіло in her blouse. He could have chucked кинути them into the fire.

"Janey," he whispered. "Yes, dear?" She lay on his breast, but so lightly, so remotely віддалено. Their breathing rose піднімається and fell опускається together.

"Janey!"

"What is it?"

"Turn to me," he whispered. A slow, deep flush flowed into his forehead – глибокий раптовий прилив розплився по його лобі. "Kiss me, Janey! You kiss me!"

It seemed to him there was a tiny pause - but long enough for him to suffer torture - before her lips touched his, firmly міцно, lightly - kissing them as she always kissed him, as though the kiss - how could he describe it? — confirmed одобрювати what they were saying, signed the contract - підписати. But that wasn't what he wanted; that wasn't at all what he thirsted for-жадати. He felt suddenly, horribly tired.

"If you knew," he said, opening his eyes, "what it's been like waiting to­day. I thought the boat never would come in. There we were, hanging about-тинятися. What kept you so long?"

She made no answer. She was looking away from him at the fire. The flames полумя hurried - hurried over the coals, flickered, fell – мерехтіло, падало.

"Not asleep, are you?" said Hammond, and he jumped her up and down.

"No," she said. And then: "Don't do that, dear. No, I was thinking. As a matter of fact власне кажучи," she said, "one of the passengers died last night - a man. That's what held us up. We brought him in -1 mean, he wasn't buried похований at sea. So, of course, the ship's doctor and the shore doctor -"

"What was it?" asked Hammond uneasily - зніяковіло. He hated to hear of death. He hated this to have happened. It was, in some queer way – дивний спосіб, as though he and Janey had met a funeral похорони on their way to the hotel.

"Oh, it wasn't anything in the least – в міру infectioius!" said Janey. She w speaking scarcely above her breath ледь вище її дихання. "It was heart. "' A pause. "Poor fellow she said. "Quite young. " And she watched the fire flicker мерехтіння вогню and fall. "He <ll in my arms," said Janey.

The blow was so sudden that Hammond thought he would faint, lit слабкий, освітлених couldn't move; he couldn't breathe. He felt all his strength flowing - flowing сила тече into the big dark chair, and the big dark chair held him fast, gripped охопив Iiimi, forced him to bear it.

"What?" he said dully глухо. "What's that you say?"'

"The end was quite peaceful," said the smatll voice. "He just" .mil Hammond saw her lift –підняти her gentle hand ніжні руки- "Breatheid his life away at the end And her hand fell.

"Who else was there?" Hammond managed to ask.

"Nobody. I was alone with him. "

Ah, my God, what was she saying! What was she doing to him! Thin would kill him. And all the while she spoke:

"I saw the change coming and I sent the steward for the doctor, but the doctor was too late. He couldn't have done anything, anyway."

"But - why you, why you!"

At that Janey turned quickly, quickly searched his face.

"You don't mind, John, do you?" she asked. "You don't - It's nothing to do with you and me. "

Somehow or other he managed to shake трясти some sort of smile at her. Somehow or other he stammered запинаючись: "No - go - on, go on! I want you to tell me."

"But, John darling -"

"Tell me, Janey!"

"There's nothing to tell," she said, wondering. "He was one of the first- class passengers. I saw he was very ill when he came on board... But he seemed to be much better until yesterday. He had a severe attack in the afternoon - excitement - nervousness, I think, about arriving. And after that he never recovered. "

"But why didn't the stewardess -"

"Oh, my dear - the stewardess!" said Janey. "What would you have felt? And besides... he might have wanted to leave a message... to -"

"Didn't he?" muttered пробурмотів Hammond. "Didn't he say anything?" "No, darling, not a word!" She shook her head softly. "All the time I was with him he was too weak... he was too weak even to move a finger..."

Janey was silent. But her words, so light, so soft, so chill, seemed to hover ширяти in the air, to r The fire had gone red. Now it fell in with a sharp - гостро sound and the room was colder. Cold crept up підкрався his arms. The room was huge, immense – безмірна, чудова, glitter - блиск піц It fillled his whole world. There was the great blind bed, with his coat Пипц across it like some heartless man saying his prayers. There was the luggage, ready to be carried away again, anywhere, tossed into trains, carted on to boats - кинув у поїзди, возили на човнах.

... He was too weak. He was too weak to move a finger. And yet he died in Jfaney's arms. She - who'd never - never once in all these years - never on ione single solitary occasion одної одиночної нагоди -

No; he mustn't think of it. Madness безумство lay in thinking of it. No, he wouldn't face it. He couldn't stand it. It was too much to bear!

And now Janey touched his tie with her fingers. She pinched the edges of the tie together.

"You're not - sorry I told you, John darling? It hasn't made you sad? It hasn't spoilt our evening - our being alone together?"

But at that he had to hide his face. He put his face into her bosom груди and his arms enfolded облягли her.

Spoilt their evening! Spoilt their being alone together! They would never be alone together again.

The fire had gone red. Now it fell in with a sharp sound and the room was colder. Cold crept підібрався up his arms. The room was huge, immense, glitter піц It fillled his whole world. There was the great blind bed, with his coat Пипц across it like some heartless man saying his prayers. There was the luggage, ready to be carried away again, anywhere, tossed into trains, carted on to boats. - кинув у поїзди, возили на човнах

... He was too weak. He was too weak to move a finger. And yet he died in Jfaney's arms. She - who'd never - never once in all these years - never on ione single solitary occasion - одної одиночної нагоди -

No; he mustn't think of it. Madness lay in thinking of it. No, he wouldn't face it. He couldn't stand it. It was too much to bear!

And now Janey touched his tie with her fingers. She pinched the edges of the tie together.

"You're not - sorry I told you, John darling? It hasn't made you sad? It hasn't spoilt our evening - our being alone together?"

But at that he had to hide his face. He put his face into her bosom and his arms enfolded her.

Spoilt their evening! Spoilt their being alone together! They would never be alone together again.

Erskine Сaldwell (1903-1987)

DAUGHTER

The literary career of Erskine Caldwell has been closely connected Willi the themes and scenes of the American South, where he was born. He ho» came the author who has been observing and writing about the South longol than any other acclaimed writer in the region. His numerous books, in his own words, form "a cyclorama of the South", always keenly feeling and respond ing to the most urgent social issues of the region and the country. The "Daugli ter" was first published in the late 30-s and was often included into varioiw collections and anthologies ever since.

At sunrise a Negro on his way to the big house to feed the mules had taken the word to Colonel Henry Maxwell, and Colonel Henry phoned the sheriff. The sheriff had hustled Jim into town and locked him up in the jail, and then he went home and ate breakfast.

Jim walked around the empty cellroom while he was buttoning his shirl, and after that he sat down on the bunk and tied his shoelaces. Everything thai morning had taken place so quickly that he had not even had time to get a drink of water. He got up and went to the water bucket near the door, but the sheriff had forgotten to put water into it.

By that time there were several men standing in the jailyard. Jim went to the window and looked out when he heard them talking. Just then another automobile drove up, and six or seven men got out. Other men were coming towards the jail from both directions of the street.

«What was the trouble out at your place this morning, Jim?» somebody said.

Jim stuck his chin between the bars and looked at the faces in the crowd. He knew everyone there.

While he was trying to figure out how everybody in town had heard about his being there, somebody else spoke to him.

«It must have been an accident, wasn't it, Jim?»

A colored boy hauling a load of cotton to the gin drove up the street. When the wagon got in front of the jail, the boy whipped up the mules with the ends of the reins and made them trot.

«1 hate to see the State have a grudge against you, Jim,» somebody said.

The sheriff came down the street swinging a tin dinner-pail in his hand. He pushed through the crowd, unlocked the door, and set the pail inside.

Several men came up behind the sheriff and looked over Ins shouldn into the jail.

«Here's your breakfast my wife fixed up for you, Jim. You'd belter cat n little, Jim boy.»

Jim looked at the pail, at the sheriff, at the open jail door, and he shook his head.

«1 don't feel hungry,» he said. «Daughter's been hungry, though - awlul

hungry.»

The sheriff backed out the door, his hand going to the handle of his pistol. He backed out so quickly that he stepped on the toes of the men behind him.

«Now, don'tyou get careless, Jim boy,» he said. «Just sit and calm yourself.»

He shut the door and locked it. After he had gone a few steps towards the street, he stopped and looked into the chamber of his pistol to make sure it had been loaded.

The crowd outside the window pressed in closer. Some of the men rapped on the bars until Jim came and looked out. When he saw them, he stuck his chin between the iron and gripped his hands around it.

«How come it to happen, Jim?» somebody asked. «It must have been an accident, wasn't it?»

Jim's long thin face looked as if it would come through the bars. The sheriff came up to the window to see if everything was all right.

«Now, just take it easy, Jim boy,» he said.

The man who had asked Jim to tell what had happened, elbowed the sheriff out of the way. The other men crowded closer.

«How come, Jim?» the man said. «Was it an accident?»

«No,» Jim said, his fingers twisting about the bars. «1 picked up my shot­gun and done it.»

The sheriff pushed towards the window again.

«Go on, Jim, and tell us what it's all about.»

Jim's face squeezed between the bars until it looked as though only his ears kept his head from coming through.

«Daughter said she was hungry, and I just couldn't stand it no longer. I just couldn't stand to hear her say it.»

«Don't get all excited now, Jim boy,» the sheriff said, pushing forward one moment and being elbowed away the next.

«She waked up in the middle of the night again and said she was hungry. I just couldn't stand to hear her say it.»

Somebody pushed all the way through the crowd until he got to the window

«Why, Jim, you could have come and asked me for something for her in eat, and you know I'd have given you all I got in the world.»

The sheriff pushed forward once more.

«That wasn't the right thing to do,» Jim said. «I've been working all yew and I made enough for all of us to eat.»

He stopped and looked down into the faces on the other side of the bai s

«1 made enough working on shares, but they came and took it all away from me. I couldn't go around begging after I'd made enough to keep lis They just came and took it all off. Then Daughter woke up again this morning saying she was hungry, and I just couldn't stand it no longer.»

«You'd better go and get on the bunk now, Jim boy,» the sheriff said.

«It don't seem right that the little girl ought to be shot like that,» some­body said.

«Daughter said she was hungry,» Jim said. «She'd been saying that foi all of the past month. Daughter'd wake up in the middle of the night and say it. I just couldn't stand it no longer.»

«You ought to have sent her over to my house, Jim. Me and my wife could have fed her something, somehow. It don't look right to kill a little girl like her.»

«I'd made enough for all of us,» Jim said. «1 just couldn't stand it no longer. Daughter'd been hungry all the past month.»

«Take it easy, Jim boy,» the sheriff said, trying to push forward.

The crowd swayed from side to side.

«And so you just picked up the gun this morning and shot her?» some­body asked.

«When she woke up this morning saying she was hungry, I just couldn't stand it.»

The crowd pushed closer. Men were coming towards the jail from all directions, and those who were then arriving pushed forward to hear what Jim had to say.

«The State has got a grudge against you now, Jim,» somebody said, «but somehow it don't seem right.»

«1 can't help it,» Jim said. «Daughter woke up again this morning that way.»

The jailyard, the street, and the vacant lot on the other side were filled with men and boys. All of them were pushing forward to hear Jim. Word had spread all over town by that time that Jim Carlisle had shot and killed his eight-year-old daughter Clara.

«Who does Jim share-crop for?» somebody asked.

«Colonel Henry Maxwell,» a man in the crowd said. «Colonel Henry has had Jim out there about nine or ten years.»

«Henry Maxwell didn't have no business coming and taking all the shares. He's got plenty of his own. It ain't right for Henry Maxwell to come and take Jim's too.»

The sheriff was pushing forward once more.

«The State's got a grudge against Jim now,» somebody said. «Somehow it don't seem right, though.»

The sheriff pushed his shoulder into the crowd of men and worked his way in closer.

A man shoved the sheriff away.

«Why did Henry Maxwell come and take your share of the crop, Jim?»

«He said I owed it to him because one of his mules died about a month ago.»

The sheriff got in front of the barred window.

«You ought to go to the bunk now and rest some, Jim boy,» he said. «Take off your shoes and stretch out, Jim boy.»

He was elbowed out of the way.

«You didn't kill the mule, did you, Jim?»

«The mule dropped dead in the barn,» Jim said. «1 wasn't nowhere around. It just dropped dead.»

The crowd was pushing harder. The men in front were jammed against the jail, and the men behind were trying to get within earshot Those in the middle were squeezed against each other so tightly they could not move in any direction. Everyone was talking louder.

Jim's face pressed between the bars and his fingers gripped the iron until the knuckles were white.

The milling crowd was moving across the street to the vacant lot. Some­body was shouting. He climbed up on an automobile and began swearing at the top of his lungs.

A man in the middle of the crowd pushed his way out and went to his automobile. He got in and drove off alone.

Jim stood holding to the bars and looking through the window. The she­riff had his back to the crowd, and he was saying something to Jim. Jim did not hear what he said.

A man on his way to the gin with a load of cotton stopped to find out what the trouble was. He looked at the crowd in the vacant lot for a moment, and then he turned around and looked at Jim behind the bars. The shouting across the street was growing louder.

«What's the trouble, Jim?»

Somebody on the other side of the street came to the wagon. He put Iiin foot on a spoke in the wagon wheel and looked up at the man on the cotton while he talked.

«Daughter woke up this morning again saying she was hungry,» Jim said

The sheriff was the only person who heard him.

The man on the load of cotton jumped to the ground, tied the reins to the wagon wheel, and pushed through the crowd to the car where all the shouting and swearing was being done. After listening for a while, he came back to tin- street, called a Negro who was standing with several other Negroes on the corner, and handed him the reins. The Negro drove off with the cotton to­wards the gin, and the man went back into the crowd.

Just then the man who had driven off alone in his car came back. He sat for a moment behind the steering wheel, and then he jumped to the ground, He opened the rear door and took out a crowbar that was as long as he was tall.

«Pry that jail door open and let Jim out,» somebody said. «It ain't right for him to be in there.»

The crowd in the vacant lot was moving again. The man who had been standing on top of the automobile jumped to the ground, and the men moved towards the street in the direction of the jail.

The first man to reach it jerked six-foot crowbar out of the soft earth where it had been jabbed.

The sheriff backed off.

«Now, take it easy, Jim boy,» he said.

He turned and started walking rapidly up the street towards his house.

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

CARCASSONNE³

William Faulkner, one of the greatest American writers, is the author of nearly forty books. For his literary accomplishments he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1950. In his acceptance speech he made an important state­ment about his belief that man will not merely endure: he will prevail and the writer's duty and obligation before mankind is to portray it.

And me on a buckskin pony with eyes like blue electricity and a mane like tangled fire, galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world.

His skeleton lay still. Perhaps it was thinking about this. Anyway, after a time it groaned. But it said nothing, which is certainly not like you he thought you are not like yourself, but I cant say that a little quiet is not pleasant.

He lay beneath an unrolled strip of tarred roofing made of paper. All of him that is, save that part which suffered neither insects nor temperature and which galloped unflagging on the destinationless pony, up a piled silver hill of cumulae where no hoof echoed nor left print, toward the blue precipice never gained. This part was neither flesh nor unflesh and he tingled a little pleasantly with its lackful contemplation as he lay beneath the tarred paper bedclothing.

So were the mechanics of sleeping, of denning up for the night, simpli­fied. Each morning the entire bed rolled back into a spool and stood erect in the corner. It was like those glasses, reading glasses which old ladies used to wear, attached to a cord that rolls onto a spindle in a neat case of unmarked gold; a spindle, a case, attached to the deep bosom of the mother of sleep.

He lay still, savoring this. Beneath him Rincon followed its fatal, secret, nightly pursuits, where upon the rich and inert darkness of the streets lighted windows and doors lay like oily strokes of broad and overladen brushes. From the docks a ship's siren un-sourced itself. For a moment it was sound, then it compassed silence, atmosphere, bringing upon the eardrums a vacuum in which nothing, not even silence, was. Then it ceased, ebbed; the silence breathed again with a clashing of palm fronds like sand hissing across a sheet of metal.

Still his skeleton lay motionless. Perhaps it was thinking about this, and he thought of his tarred paper bed as a pair of spectacles through which he nightly perused the fabric of dreams:

Across the twin transparencies of the spectacles the horse still gallops with its tangled welter of tossing flames. Forward and back against the taut roundness of its belly its legs swing, rhythmically reaching and overreaching, each spurning overreach punctuated by a flicking limberness of shod hooves He can see the saddle-girth and the soles of the rider's feet in the stirrups. The girth cuts the horse in two just back of the withers, yet it still gallops with rhythmic and unflagging fury and without progression, and he thinks of that riderless Norman steed which galloped against the Saracen Emir, who, so keen of eye, so delicate and strong the wrist which swung the blade, severed the galloping beast at a single blow, the severed halves thundering on in the sacred dust where him of Bouillon and Tancred too clashed in sullen retreat; thundering on through the assembled foes of our meek Lord, wrapped still in the fury and the pride of the charge, not knowing that it was dead.

The ceiling of the garret slanted in a ruined pitch to the low eaves. It was dark, and body consciousness, assuming the office of vision, shaped in his mind's eye his motionless body grown phosphorescent with that steady decay which had set up within his body on the day of his birth. The flesh is dead living on itself subsisting consuming itself thriftily in its own renewal will never die for I am the Resurrection and the Life Of a man, the worm should be lusty, lean, haired-over. Of women, of delicate girls briefly like heard music in tune, it should be suavely shaped, falling feeding into prettinesses, feeding. What though to Me but as a seething of new milk Who am the Resurrection and the Life.

It was dark. The agony of wood was soothed by these latitudes; empty rooms did not creak and crack. Perhaps wood was like any other skeleton though, after a time, once reflexes of old compulsions had spent themselves. Bones might lie under seas, in the caverns of the sea, knocked together by the dying echoes of waves. Like bones of horses cursing the inferior riders who bestrode them, bragging to one another about what they would have done with a first-rate rider up. But somebody always crucified the first-rate riders. And then it's better to be bones knocking together to the spent motion of falling tides in the caverns and the grottoes of the sea.

where him of Bouillon and Tancred too

His skeleton groaned again. Across the twin transparencies of the glassy floor the horse still galloped, unflagging and without progress, its destination the barn where sleep was stabled. It was dark. Luis, who ran the cantina downstairs, allowed him to sleep in the garret. But the Standard Oil Company, who owned the garret and the roofing paper, owned the darkness too; it was Mrs Widdrington's, the Standard Oil Company's wife's, darkness he was using to sleep in. She'd make a poet of you too, if you did not work anywhere. She believed that, if a reason for breathing were not acceptable to her, it was no reason. With her, if you were white and did not work, you were either a tramp or a poet. Maybe you were. Women are so wise. They have learned how to live unconfused by reality, impervious to it. It was dark.

and knock my bones together and together It was dark, a darkness filled with a fairy pattering of small feet, stealthy and intent. Sometimes the cold patter of them on his face waked him in the night, and at his movement they scurried invisibly like an abrupt disintegration of dead leaves in a mind, in whispering arpeggios of minute sound, leaving a thin but definite effluvium of furtiveness and voracity. At times, lying so while daylight slanted grayly along the ruined pitch of the eaves, he watched their shadowy flickings from obscurity to obscurity, shadowy and huge as cats, leaving along the stagnant silences those whispering gusts of fairy feet.

Mrs Widdrington owned the rats too. But wealthy people have to own so many things. Only she didn't expect the rats to pay for using her darkness and silence by writing poetry. Not that they could not have, and pretty fair verse probably. Something of the rat about Byron: allocutions of stealthful voracity: a fairy pattering of little feet behind a bloody arras where fell where fell where I was King of Kings but the woman with the woman with the dog's eyes to knock my bones together and together

«1 would like to perform something,» he said, shaping his lips soundlessly in the darkness, and the galloping horse filled his mind again with soundless thunder.

He could see the saddlegirth and the soles of the rider's stiiruped feet, and he thought of that Norman steed, bred of many fathers to bear iron mail in the slow, damp, green valleys of England, maddened with heat and thirst and hopeless horizons filled with shimmering nothingness, thundering along in two halves and not knowing it, fused still in the rhythm of accrued momentum. Its head was mailed so that it could not see forward at all, and from the center of the plates projected a - projected a - «Chamfron,» his skeleton said.

«Chamfron.» He mused for a time, while the beast that did not know that it was dead thundered on as the ranks of the Lamb's foes opened in the sacred dust and let it through. «Chamfron,» he repeated. Living, as it did, a retired life, his skeleton could know next to nothing of the world. Yet it had an astonishing and exasperating way of supplying him with bits of trivial information that had temporarily escaped his mind. «All you know is what 1 tell you,» he said.

«Not always,» the skeleton said. «I know that the end of life is lying still. You haven't learned that yet. Or you haven't mentioned it to me, anyway.»

«Oh, I've learned it,» he said. «I've had it dinned into me enough. It isn't that. It's that I don't believe it's true.»

The skeleton groaned.

«I don't believe it, I say,» he repeated.

«All right, all right,» the skeleton said testily. «I shan't dispute you. I never do. I only give you advice.»

«Somebody has to, I guess,» he agreed sourly. «At least, it looks like it.» He lay still beneath the tarred paper, in a silence filled with fairy patterings. Again his body slanted and slanted downward through opaline corridors groined with ribs of dying sunlight upward dissolving dimly, and came to rest at last in the windless gardens of the sea. About him the awaying caverns and the grottoes, and his body lay on the rippled floor, tumbling peacefully to the wavering echoes of the tides.

I want to perform something bold and tragical and austere he repeated, sharing the soundless words in the pattering silence me on a buckskin pony with eyes like blue electricity and a mane like tangled fire, galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world Still galloping, the horse soars outward; still galloping it thunders up the long blue hill of heaven, its tossing mane in golden swirls like fire. Steed and rider thunder on, thunder punily diminishing: a dying star upon the immensity of darkness and of silence within which, steadfast, fading, deepbreasted and grave of flank, muses the dark and tragic figure of the Earth, his mother.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

THE LAST TEA

I Jorothy Parker, well known for her wry humour and witty satire in drama, poetry and criticism, in our country is appreciated mainly for short stories, whicli locus on ccrtain dominant themes, such as frustrated love and cheated idealism in modern living. «The Last Tea» was first published in 1932 and was, since, repeatedly included into numerous collections of short stories and anthologies.

The young man in the chocolate-brown suit sat down at the table, where the girl with the artificial camellia had been sitting for forty minutes.

«Guess I must be late,» he said. «Sorry you been waiting.»

«Oh, goodness!» she said. «1 just got here myself, just about a second ago. I simply went ahead and ordered because I was dying for a cup of tea. I was late, myself. I haven't been here more than a minute.»

«That's good,» he said. «Hey, hey, easy on the sugar - one lump is fair enough. And take away those cakes. Terrible! Do I feel terrible!»

«Ah,» she said, «you do? Ah. Whadda matter?»

«Oh, I'm ruined,» he said. «I'm in terrible shape.»

«Ah, the poor boy,» she said. «Was it feelin' mizzable? Ah, and it came way up here to meet me! You shouldn't have done that - I'd have under­stood. Ah, just think of it coming all the way up here when it's so sick!»

«Oh, that's all right,» he said. «1 might as well be here as any place else. Any place is like any other place, the way I feel today. Oh, I'm all shot.»

«Why, that's just awful,» she said. «Why, you poor sick thing. Goodness, I hope it isn't influenza. They say there's a lot of it around.»

«Influenza!» he said. «1 wish that was all I had. Oh, I'm poisoned. I'm through. I'm off the stuff for life. Know what time I got to bed? Twenty minutes past five, A. M., this morning. What a night! What an evening!»

«1 thought,» she said, «that you were going to stay at the office and work late. You said you'd be working every night this week.»

«Yeah, I know,» he said. «But it gave me the jumps, thinking about going down there and sitting at that desk. I went up to May's - she was throwing a party. Say, there was somebody there said they knew you.»

«Honestly?» she said. «Man or woman?»

«Dame,» he said. «Name's Carol McCall. Say, why haven't I been told about her before? That's what I call a girl. What a looker she is!»

«Oh, really?» she said. «That's funny - I never heard of anyone that thought that. I've heard people say she was sort of nice-looking, if she wouldn't make up so much. But I never heard of anyone that thought she was pretty.»

«Pretty is right,» he said. «What a couple of eyes she's got on her!»

«Really?» she said. «1 never noticed them particularly. But I haven't seen her for a long time -sometimes people change, or something.»

«She says she used to go to school with you,» he said.

«Well, we went to the same school,» she said. «1 simply happened to go to public school because it happened to be right near us, and Mother hated to have me crossing streets. But she was three or four classes ahead of me. She's ages older than I am.»

«She's three or four classes ahead of them all,» he said. «Dance! Can she step! "Bum your clothes, baby," I kept telling her. I must have been fried pretty.»

«1 was out dancing myself, last night,» she said. «Wally Dillon and I. He's just been pestering me to go out with him. He's the most wonderful dancer. Goodness! I didn't get home till I don't know what time. I must look just simply a wreck. Don't 1?»

«You look all right,» he said.

«Wally's crazy,» she said. «The things he says! For some crazy reason or other, he's got it into his head that I've got beautiful eyes, and, well, he just kept talking about them till I didn't know where to look, I was so embar­rassed. I got so red, I thought everybody in the place would be looking at me. I got just as red as a brick. Beautiful eyes! Isn't he crazy?»

«He's all right,» he said. «Say, this little McCall girl, she's had all kinds of offers to go into moving pictures. "Why don't you go ahead and go?' I told her. But she says she doesn't feel like it.»

«There was a man up at the lake, two summers ago,» she said. «He was a director or something with one of the big moving-picture people - oh, he had all kinds of influence! - and he used to keep insisting and insisting that I ought to be in the movies. Said I ought to be doing sort of Garbo parts. I used to just laugh at him. Imagine!»

«She's had about a million offers,» he said. «1 told her to go ahead and go. She keeps getting these offers all the time.»

«Oh, really?» she said. «Oh, listen, I knew I had something to ask you. Did you call me up last night, by any chance?» «Me?» he said. «No, I didn't call you.»

«While I was out, Mother said this man's voice kept calling up,» she said. «1 thought maybe it might be you, by some chance. I wonder who it could have been. Oh -1 guess I know who it was. Yes, that's who it was!»

«No, I didn't call you,» he said. «1 couldn't have seen a telephone, last night. What a head I had on me, this morning! I called Carol up, around ten, and she said she was feeling great. Can that girl hold her liquor!»

«It's a funny thing about me,» she said. «It just makes me feel sort of sick to see a girl drink. It's just something in me, I guess. I don't mind a man so much, but it makes me feel perfectly terrible to see a girl get intoxicated. It's just the way I am, I suppose.»

«Does she carry it!» he said. «And then feels great the next day. There's a girl! Hey, what are you doing there? I don't want any more tea, thanks. I'm not one of these tea boys. And these tea rooms give me the jumps. Look at all those old dames, will you? Enough to give you the jumps.»

«Of course, if you'd rather be some place, drinking, with I don't know what kinds of people,» she said, «I'm sure I don't see how I can help that. Goodness, there are enough people that are glad enough to take me to tea. I don't know how many people keep calling me up and pestering me to take me to tea. Plenty of people!»

«All right, all right, I'm here, aren't 1?» he said. «Keep your hair on.»

«1 could name them all day,» she said.

«All right,» he said. «What's there to crab about?»

«Goodness, it isn't any of my business what you do,» she said. «But I hate to see you wasting your time with people that aren't nearly good enough for you. That's all.»

«No need worrying over me,» he said. «I'll be all right. Listen. You don't have to worry.»

«It's just I don't like to see you wasting your time,» she said, «staying up all night and then feeling terribly the next day. Ah, I was forgetting he was so sick. Ah, I was mean, wasn't I, scolding him when he was so mizzable. Poor boy. How's he feel now?»

«Oh, I'm all right,» he said. «1 feel fine. You want anything else? How about getting a check? I got to make a telephone call before six.»

«Oh, really?» she said. «Calling up Garol?»

«She said she might be in around now,» he said.

«Seeing her tonight?» she said.

«She's going to let me know when I call up,» he said. «She's probably got about a million dates. Why?»

«1 was just wondering,» she said. «Goodness, I've got to fly! I'm having dinner with Wally, and he's so crazy, he's probably there now. He's called me up about a hundred times today.»

«Wait till I pay the check,» he said, «and I'll put you on a bus.»

«Oh, don't bother,» she said. «It's right at the comer. I've got to fly. I suppose you want to stay and call up your friend from here?»

«It's an idea,» he said. «Sure you'll be all right?»

«Oh, sure,» she said. Busily she gathered her gloves and purse, and left her chair. He rose, not quite fully, as she stopped beside him.

«When'll I see you again?» she said.

«I'll call you up,» he said. «I'm all tied up, down at the office and every­thing. Tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a ring.»

«Honestly, I have more dates!» she said. «It's terrible. I don't know when I'll have a minute. But you call up, will you?»

«I'll do that,» he said. «Take care of yourself.»

«You take care of yourself,» she said. «Hope you'll feel all right.»

«Oh, I'm fine,» he said. «Just beginning to come back to life.»

«Be sure and let me know how you feel,» she said. «Will you? Sure, now? Well, good-bye. Oh, have a good time tonight!»

«Thanks,» he said. «Hope you have a good time, too.»

«Oh, I will,» she said. «1 expect to. I've got to rush! Oh, I nearly forgot! Thanks ever so much for the tea. It was lovely.»

«Be yourself, will you?» he said.

«It was,» she said. «Well. Now don't forget to call me up, will you? Sure? Well, good-by.»

«Solong,» he said.

She walked on down the little line between the blue-painted tables.

Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1932)

THE MAN THAT TURNED INTO A STATUE

Joyce Carol Oates, a well-known and prolific American author, combines her creative activities with teaching at a Canadian university. The winner ol' numerous literary awards since her debut in 1963, she has published over fifty books in diverse genres. Her admirers and critics alike claim that she is the strongest as a short story writer. The story presented below was first published in 1966, in the collection «Upon the Sweeping Flood» - and, among others, serves an illustration of the author's creative credo: «1 am concerned,» she says, «with only one thing: the moral and social conditions of my generation.»

When reading the story pay attention to the repetitions of «bad luck», «gone wrong», «hate»; also to the significance of tense changes (esp. the appearance of Past Perfect, Future in the Past); to the signals of viewpoint shifts.

They emerged from the bushes at the side of the road. The girl, who was really a child, had a sardonic dazed look that seemed frozen into her face; she wore an orange sweater with an orange cord that tied at her waist and white pedal pushers that were soiled. Each step she took drew wrinkles sharply across these pedal pushers. Her clothes were too tight for her, she had grown out of them in this past year, her body pushing up and out like a vegetable swelling patiently in the earth. Her face was round and hard, with small pursed lips and eyes that seemed to slant in her face like almonds; her brown hair was reckless about her face, snarled from the wind. The man, grunting as he climbed up to the road, was over forty: his dark hair was thin, receding back sharply from his forehead but leaving a patch there right in the center; his face was pale and surprised-looking, this look, too, frozen into him. It was October and chilly; in the bluish light that came at sundown in this part of the country, the narrow road with its cracked pavement and snakelike strips of tar seemed to glow and rise slightly up above the dirt shoulders.

«Now whatcha going to do, you're so smart?» the girl said.

Something had caught across the man's chest, a vine that was entangled in the bush. He paused to tug at it - a slender green vine with tiny ruined flowers - and when he could not get it off at once he tore viciously at it. The girl, watching him with her arms folded and her legs set apart in a pretence of confidence, saw a ripple of fear cross his face. The man muttered something. He had a long nervous nose; his lips were always loose, always about to mutter something, perhaps because his teeth protruded slightly and he could not quite close his mouth.

«Now it's dark so if anybody comes we can see them first. See the headlights,» he said.

«Yeah, you're so goddamn smart,» the girl said. She wiped her eyes.

«Smart enough to get us out of this, I guarantee that.»

But he stood on the road, looking back and forth in both directions and rubbing his hands, and did not seem to know what to do after all. «Spost to be in Canada by now,» the girl said. «That map you showed me -»

«Just bad luck,» he muttered. The girl watched his hands and felt something prod at her brain: fear, like the touch of a bat's wing. But she hardened her face again and looked down at her shoes, which were new, red-and-white- striped sneakers she had been seeing in the shoe store window for weeks. But this shoe store had been too near home, it was a mistake to think of it. She wiped her eyes again and her mouth turned into a bitter line. «1 had bad luck all my life,» the man said. She had heard this before. The first time she had seen him, when he was sitting on the steps that led down to his basement apartment, he had started to talk about this out of nowhere, angrily and mournfully, as if his bad luck were something he expected to get hold of with his hands. «Some people get born with it and others don't. Those bastards you see on the expressway, driving out of the city, they don't have it. Got jobs downtown and then drive home out of the city; got born without it. Nobody that gets born without bad luck can understand or give a damn about somebody that has it...» His words ended in a murmur, as if he were no longer paying attention to them. «Okay, come on. This way.»

«You're sure, this way?» she said sarcastically.

«Come on.»

They walked. It was getting dark and this long day was coming to an end at last, but the end did not mean anything because nothing had been settled. So much had happened, had gone wrong, they were still on foot... The girl remembered suddenly, without wanting to, the door opening and the woman rushing in: the back of the fruit store, smelly and grubby, with empty fruit baskets piled all over, and she standing beside this man as he rifled desperately through a tin box that was supposed to have hundreds of dollars in it but had only a few bills scattered among papers that made no sense. Why had the woman come in just then? She and her old husband had been carrying strips of canvas back along the side of the building, as they did every morning, opening the store up. They lived in two or three rooms on the second floor.

But something had gone wrong with the man's plans, though he and the girl had watched the dilapidated back door of the building from the man's basement window across the alley for days. Yet the man had acted like someone in a movie, whirling around and striking the woman without even thinking, he was so fast; the girl's mind was dazzled still at the spectacle of his fist and the woman's surprised face, an image isolated out of the dim jumble of junk behind it; something she would remember all her life. Thinking of it now, she glanced at the man fondly. If only his teeth did not protrude like that and make his jaw slant up to meet them... All his life, he had told her, he had tried to fight his way up and had been pushed back down. His bad luck was like a sickness. The girl, though only thirteen, understood vaguely the difference between her world and the world promised her in movies and in movie magazines, and felt bitterness side by side with her infatuation for this other world. Sitting in the movie house, seeing a movie over for the second or third time, she had often been startled at the way her love for the people on the screen had jerked away, suddenly, to leave her sullen and hateful. When she went home the feeling would get worse, and only in sleep would it vanish; but then she would have to wake up the next morning, another school day, and lying in bed staring at the gritty windowpane, she could feel the waiting familiar world discharge itself into her mouth and down her throat, into her heart and stomach, turning her heavy and inert with hate as if something had caught there, some seed, and had begun to grow.

«If we try for a ride we'll get picked up,» the man said, cracking his knuckles. «That bitch got a good look at me and you both, should of hit her harder... Hell of a chance, hitching for a ride, because some bastard driving by would go and call the cops from a garage or some-place. That's how they are. Nobody asks why you do something or if something made you do it, they don't give a damn. You slip off the road and can't get back on again. They might as well take your name from you and slice off your face, because you can't make it back up again, they don't give a damn, they never think how easy it might be to trade places with you...»

The girl was not listening but dreaming of a field somewhere, of a morning in warm weather, and of herself walking slowly toward this man, who stood leaning against a fence waiting for her. From this distance he looked young and not really familiar. She began to hurry through the grass - which was green and vivid, like grass in a magazine picture - with her arms outstretched to him, her heart racing - «Here comes a car!» the man said. He grabbed at her and they ran clumsily through the bushes and into the ditch. The bottom of the ditch was wet. The girl did not watch the car but stood rubbing her arm. It was not really dark and yet everywhere objects were losing their shapes. The wild field ran back in a tumult to a wood some distance away where trees were dissolved into one another like water in water. The car's headlights seized upon the leaves of the bush and then swept past. «Wonder who's riding in there, lucky bastards,» the man muttered.

«1 should hitch for a ride myself, I'm tired as hell of walking and hiding,» the girl said. «1 said, I should get a ride by myself.» The man turned to her. She saw in his expression the queer tense bafflement she had seen when the woman had walked into the back room of the store and when the vine had caught across his chest.

«You wouldn't be safe by yourself,» he said.

«Yeah?»

«You need somebody to take care of you, a little girl like you -»

«Yeah, sure.»

She was ready to step away if he came toward her; he knew this and did not move. The girl followed rules that had come to her out of nowhere - she did not know where - and told her always what to do, when to do it, when it was not right to do anything: in the daylight or when other people were around. She would have been sick to her stomach if he had forced her to break these rules, though she did not know where she had learned them. The man, who had often cringed before her and pressed his wet cheeks against her knees, murmuring things to her she did not hear and after a while did not pay attention to, now stared at her and cracked his knuckles. «I'm going to take good care of you, get some food in you. You're hungry, that's all. You believe all I told you, don't you?»

«Sure I believe you.»

«1 was married one time and I took care of her too,» he said. «Begun all over from a beginning but hit a snag. Three times already I begun over and this is the fourth and last. Going to begin over again up in Canada. Don't you believe me?»

«Sure.» The girl ran through the bushes and back up onto the road. A branch had swept across her eye and made it smart, but instead of getting angry she made herself laugh. This was only the second time that she had run away from home. The first time had been a mistake, she had been too young, hadn't any money; she had tried to keep going just on her hatred for her mother and father. But it was different now. She knew what she was doing now. She would keep her hatred for them safe, as if it were a tiny seed she carried greedily inside her, and once away from them and across the shadowy border that separated her from the real world she would let this hatred blossom and so get rid of it. And they would yearn for her across this border, they would keep waiting for her to come home, her mother would be stuffed with baby after baby and yet they would keep waiting for her to come home... .

«Something wrong?» the man said.

The girl turned away. She had begun to cry and was ashamed.

«Yeah, it's cold,» the man said nervously, «1 got to get you someplace warm and safe. Get some food into you. Don't you worry.» He slid his arm about her shoulders and they walked along the edge of the road. The girl stared down at the rigid strips of tar in the pavement, one after another across the road like flattened snakes. «I'll change how we are now, don't you worry. Nothing stays the same but has to change. Change is a fact of our life. I read you that part in my book about the laws, didn't I? How they change every place you go and every different person you are?» The girl had forced herself to think of that warm sunlit field again and she resented his question. «Why are you writing that crazy old book anyway,» she said. «How the laws change before you even have time to learn them,» the man said. He was excited now and could talk to himself as if she were not even there. «Everything changes, won't stay fixed. When my grandmother died I was ten, ten years old, a boy. I was a boy. I went in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror for half an hour, maybe. I made faces and looked at my teeth... Do you believe that? I was a boy but I can't remember it, I can remember only a boy in the mirror that I couldn't possibly have been, that was somebody else, a boy who's still a boy... not me... And when that boy that was supposed to be me came out of the bathroom he had to think about his grandmother again, because she was dead and the house smelled of it and there was no way to forget. Everybody smelled of it. All this is in my book too. The Man That Turned into a Statue, that's what it's called.» He touched his coat gently; he must have been carrying the notebook there. «Remember why it's called that?»

«Cause that's what you're trying to do,» the girl sneered. «Turn into a statue!»

«My wife too, she's in there... She was a small woman with hair your color, she had pierced ears. Bluish hands, as if she could never get them warm. She put a crucifix up on the wall that I could feel watching me, tiny little blind eyes in the crucified man, no eyes at all, really, but I could feel them watching me even in the dark... I didn't want to hate her,» he said angrily. «1 didn't want to hate anyone. Never. Not once. I was always pushed into it, like being pushed into a fire from other people crowding up close. It was like a big whirlpool in the ocean, the deepest part, where everything spins round and round and gets sucked in, and you can't get away from it. If you ran your whole life in the opposite direction you'd get sucked there anyhow, so what the hell? But I never wanted to hate.»

He hugged her clumsily and she felt a surge of gratitude. He would take care of her. She did not understand much of what he said, did not even listen to it, but she knew he would take care of her. These shoes she wore, right now, he had paid for; he had not even asked for the change. He had seemed not to know there was any change.

«Another incident in my book,» he said in a different voice, a chatty voice, «a man and woman were fighting in a bar. I was there. The man knocked her down right by the juke box, that was all lit up different colors and playing some song. Then he started kicking her and I went over. I said, what the hell are you doing? I told him to stop. But he never paid any attention, and when I pulled his arm he just pushed me away. He never paid any attention. So I went back and sat down. That incident is in there too, with a lot of description. I'm particularly good at description -»

Somewhere close, a dog had begun to bark. The man froze. They could hear the dog running but in the dusk could see only the vague jumbled field beside them. The girl began trembling. «Don't worry,» the man muttered. «Bad comes to worst I got this knife.»

The dog appeared before them: not a large dog but nervous and wiry, with a dull black coat and dancing paws and ears cringing back alongside its head. «Here, here boy,» the man said. «It's okay, boy. We don't want no trouble. It's okay.» The dog snarled. It leaped toward them and froze; crouched low, with its mouth twisted up into what looked like a grin. The girl stood behind the man, shivering. She was frightened, not so much by the dog itself as by the way the dog seemed to hate them, as if there were something wrong with them, people the dog had never encountered before. She could feel her own face twisting into a painful mirroring of the dog's look. «Here, boy. Nice boy. Here, here,» the man pleaded. He even extended his hand. The dog eyed them suspiciously. For a moment it hesitated, as if thinking; then it leaped at the man's hand. They heard its teeth click. «Bastard,» the man said. The dog fell away as it yanked to one side. The man turned to face it, cracking his knuckles. He began again, murmuring to the dog, bending with his hand out, his shoulders hunched and obsequious. The dog crouched snarling against the road. For some seconds it did not move and the man straightened a little. «Maybe if we just keep on walking,» he said. «Show him we got somewhere to go. Sometimes they let you go, then.»

They walked on. The dog followed them. At first it kept some distance away but then it came nearer; just as the girl glanced around it lunged at the man's leg, its snarls breaking out into harsh barks that sounded like coughs. The man cried out and kicked it away. «The bastard, why don't it let us alone! The bastard!» he said. His voice was profoundly sad. The dog retreated and watchcd them. After a moment the man put his arm around the girl's shoulders again, to protect her, and they turned to walk on. The girl kept looking back. That dog, she thought, was the kind of dog she had always seen whining at screen doors or looking out car windows, its ears flapping in the wind; it never barked viciously or leaped at anyone. She had been seeing dogs like this all her life but now something was wrong.

Then the dog leaped again. Suddenly it was close behind them and against the man's legs, its muzzle darting from place to place and its teeth flashing. The man kicked it away but it lunged back at once. Something seemed to enliven it, some inexplicable energy that drove it on, snarling maliciously and desperately. The man cried out in pain. He stooped and picked something up - a tree branch -and slashed at the dog. The dog pranced and leaped; «Get back or I'll kill you,» the man sobbed. He tried to flick the branch across the dog's face but the dog always ducked away. «I'll kill you, kill you,» he said. He threw the branch at the dog and took out of his pocket the knife he used to clean his fingernails and to pick mud off his shoes. The girl could not tell if he threw himself down on the dog or if his knees suddenly collapsed, jerking and terrified.

When the man got to his feet he was panting violently. He stumbled backward. The dog lay writhing; it was bleeding from a wound in its stomach. The man stared as if he could not remember where he was, what had happened. «Well, you got him,» the girl said hollowly. She touched the man and he did not seem to notice. «He shouldn't of come after us,» she said. She saw that the front of the man's pants was speckled with blood. They would get him, then, she thought, and when they did she would say he had kidnapped her. He had forced her to come with him. And they would believe her, and she would wait for another man to come to her just as she had waited for this one...

«Let's go. Got to keep going,» the man said. He began walking fast. The girl hurried to keep up with him. In a while they saw a house ahead, with its porch light on. «That was their dog. I spose,» the man said. «Think they heard him bark?» But no one was out on the porch. The light was an ugly yellow light that fell upon the porch roof and slashed the floor in half, lighting up an old sofa and some junk but leaving the rest in shadow, and lighting up the driveway and a car parked there on a small incline.

The girl felt terror rising stupidly within her at the sight of this house. Each window was lit, even the attic window. Someone lived up there - a child, probably. A little bedroom. She knew they would not go past the house but would go in, and this knowledge pressed down upon her like a giant palm on the top of her head. Her legs were suddenly exhausted under the strain. «We had better hurry on past here,» she said.

«But we got to get some food,» the man said. He was still trembling and his voice too was trembling. She had known he would say this. «It's not like I don't have the money to pay for it. I do. I'll pay for it. If I just didn't have this bad luck always behind me... somebody else would be up in Canada now, all safe, and not make you walk around at night, chased by dogs...»

«1 don't want to go in that house,» the girl said.

«1 never asked for no dog to come, that's for sure,» the man said. They were at the end of the driveway now. The girl had stopped shivering. She saw, brushing behind one of the windows, a woman's figure, a flash of color drawing back a curtain and almost immediately releasing it. «You think they might know about us, those people in there?» the man said. «Heard about it on the radio or something?»

«How the hell do I know,» said the girl.

«1 got to take care of you. I guarantee that...» He took a step forward. She wanted to pull him back but instead stared at the side of his face in fascination. What was there about him that enchanted her, what was it in his humble malicious face that seemed to show how he was enchanted as well? «1 bet they're eating in there. Smell it? That's food. Do you smell it?»

«No, nothing.»

She smelled something else - an odor of blood and earth and night.

«Sure you smell it. Potatoes or something. Meat...» He put the knife away and went up the driveway. His feet crunched in the gravel. Tediously the girl followed; as he approached the light she saw the bloodstains on his pants, dark wet clots. She was too exhausted to say anything. It did not matter anyway. «We can pay for anything we eat, that's not the trouble. I pay as I go. Always have always will. My word is always been good, you can ask anybody that... .»

Before he got to the porch someone was at the door, a fat man in just an undershirt and pants. «Yeah, what do you want?» he said. He loomed up close against the screen door so that his face was dim. «What do you two want?»

«Hello, mister,» said the man in a new voice. He waited for the girl to come up beside him; her legs had begun to ache. «We had a accident up the road and had to walk. Had some trouble. Was wondering if we could -»

«Car trouble?»

«Car trouble, yes, and had to walk, and haven't eaten for a long time -»

A child appeared behind the man, a girl with long dark hair. The man turned and said something to her; she went away. The girl's eyes narrowed, seeing her.

«Mister, we had a lot of bad luck and sure would appreciate some help.»

The man hesitated. He had a big stomach that strained against his white undershirt and bulged a little over his belt. Then he said, «We got no telephone here.»

«If we could have something to eat -1 - I'll pay for it -»

«No.»

«1 got money, look here. Look, that's a fact. I'll pay for it, anything you want. My little girl here -»

«No.»

The girl wondered if that fat man had seen the blood. He had begun shaking his head, but the man continued up the driveway and went right up to the porch just the same. He muttered all the way, right through the fat man's angry voice, as if he did not hear it. «1 don't run no roadside restaurant here,» the fat man said, «1 don't have no open house for tramps! What the hell are you doing? What do you think you're -»

Still with his shoulders bent apologetically, the man opened the screen door and plunged the knife into the fat man's chest. The girl's eyes seemed to pinch, jerking her head forward. The fat man had been talking and was now silent. He fell back into the light, his body turning, his arms outstretched, and the girl could see now a brilliant stream of blood emerging out of him as if his words had turned into this. Inside the house, someone screamed. The man went right in the house, as if he were coming home, and with the knife still in his hand ran through to the next room. He might have known all the rooms in the house, nothing would surprise him. The girl, leaning against the door frame, caught the screen door as it swung idly back to her and stared at the dying man; he stared at her. Coldness enveloped her body like a flame. The dying man gazed at her with a look of angry curiosity over the heaving blossom of blood on his chest. From the other room there were screams; something overturned. Crashing. Glass, dishes broken. Every sound was another weight added to her body, making her heavy and old, so that she did not think she would ever be able to move again.

After a minute or so the man returned, still hurrying. «Come on,» he said. «It's okay. I fixed it.» He pulled at the girl's arm and she saw that he was trying to smile. «Okay. Everything okay. I'll take care of you.» She stared at him. She had forgotten how to talk.

«Come on,» he said. «In here, I got them dragged out back. They won't bother you now, come on. We better hurry.»

She allowed him to lead her into the kitchen. There things were knocked about - chairs, plates, silverware on the floor, a mess of potatoes down by her feet. They had been eating supper, apparently. Most of the dishes were still on the table. «Come on. Sit. Sit down,» the man said nervously. Blood had splashed up onto his chest and throat, but he did not notice. There was blood smeared faintly on his forehead. The girl, sitting at the table, looked about and saw blood gleaming on the linoleum, by the sink. A screen door led out back into the darkness; there was blood in great sweep strokes, like angels' wings, to this door and out it, into nothing. The girl sat, slowly. She felt the chair hard beneath her and the table against her cold arms, elbows. «Here, there's this,» the man said. He pushed a plate toward her: on it were a piece of meat and some mashed potatoes with gravy on them. The gravy was greasy. She looked up to see the man shaking salt on his food. He tried to smile, nervously, brightly, like a host uncertain of his charm. «Okay, come on. We better hurry. Got us a car now but we better hurry anyway. You know how it is.» The girl's gaze fell back down to the plate before her, as if it were suddenly overcome. Her hand groped for something - a fork. She found one and picked it up. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the man eating, his head lowered toward the plate, like a dog, and turned also a little to the side so that he chewed with a look of precise, methodical concentration. The girl tried to remember something but could not. She could not remember what it was that eluded her, just as she could not get hold of the dreams that pleased her so at night when she woke: everything vanished, brushed away. Was something lost or had she simply passed over into the real world, so that now old things were dismissed and new things had names yet to be learned? She could hear the man chewing.

She poked at the mashed potatoes with the fork. The man, raising his head suddenly, said through a mouthful of food, «Here, it needs this,» and pushed the salt shaker at her. The salt shaker was in the form of a baby chick, bright lacquered yellow. The girl picked it up and shook salt onto the half- eaten food. She watched the tiny white granules fall; they were not lost but remained there, waiting to be eaten. She set the salt shaker down and her fingers brushed against the man's arm, reaching out for something else across the table. «Got to be always in a hurry, sorry for it,» he muttered, stuffing bread into his mouth, «but it ain't always going to be like this. I guarantee that.

Got us a new life coming up.» She could see the faint pale gleam of his skin beneath his hair, blank and white, something she had never been able to see before. She felt like a bride awakened to a body strange and new.